


finding the light hidden in darkness

by quantumducky



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Deceit is chaotic neutral, Eventual Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, It’s not a good time, Kidnapping, Kinda, Patton gets hurt, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Tread Carefully, Virgil underestimates himself, is [spoiler] okay? yeah he’s okay but he died, my OC is the wooooorst, perceived character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 02:35:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14534823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumducky/pseuds/quantumducky
Summary: Anxiety wasn’t sure the other ‘dark’ sides had really thought it through when they’d decided to leave him home alone for a week while they did whatever it was they were doing.  Not that he didn’t want to be- having the house to himself was great- but it was stressful being responsible for everything that needed to get done around here until they came back.Like, for example, right now he had the responsibility of taking food down to their prisoner, who he’d never even gone near before.  Morality.  The others said he was dangerous, incredibly powerful without the suppressing chains they had him in.  He was the one who put them here, in this house on the outskirts of the mind where it was always night, the one who had banished them to the darkness.  He hated them all, apparently, and Anxiety was just a little terrified of him.  Deceit had captured him somehow a few months ago, and he’d been locked in the basement ever since, supposedly so they could keep him from locking them out of the mind entirely, and Anxiety had been warned not to go down there.  And now, for some reason, they were entrusting all this to him.  He wondered if he’d done something to offend Malice recently.





	finding the light hidden in darkness

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this is an au where the “dark” sides live in a separate house from the main 3 and virgil is one of them, and they’re all opposites of each other so virgil is roman’s, deceit is logan’s, and i made one up for patton
> 
> ...i would like to formally apologize for all of this i didn’t even originally plan to ever post it but here we are
> 
> while you read play "spot the song references i couldn't resist throwing in!"

Anxiety wasn’t sure the other ‘dark’ sides had really thought it through when they’d decided to leave him home alone for a week while they did whatever it was they were doing.  Not that he didn’t want to be- having the house to himself was _great,_ he could leave his room without getting ambushed by unexpected interaction- but it was also stressful being responsible for everything that needed to get done around here until they came back.  And knowing that if he messed it up while they were gone they would definitely be mad, and having those two mad at him was never a good time.

Like, for example, right now he had the responsibility of taking food down to their prisoner, who he’d never even gone near before.   _Morality._  The others said he was dangerous, incredibly powerful without the suppressing chains they had him in.  He was the one who put them here, in this house on the outskirts of the mind where it was always night, the one who had banished them to the darkness.  He hated them all, apparently, and Anxiety was just a little terrified of him. Deceit had captured him somehow a few months ago, and he’d been locked in the basement ever since, supposedly so they could keep _him_ from locking _them_ out of the mind entirely, and Anxiety had been warned not to go down there.  And now, for some reason, they were entrusting all _this_ to him.  He wondered if he’d done something to offend Malice recently.

He stood motionless in the kitchen for several minutes, but finally decided that if they came back and he hadn’t done his job, there would be worse in store for him than anything Morality could do.  Which, realistically, under the circumstances, probably wasn’t much? ...Probably? He picked up a sandwich and a water bottle with slightly shaking hands and opened the door to the basement stairs.

It was dark in the basement.  He flipped the switch by the stairs with his elbow and heard a sharp gasp.  His heartrate picked up, but he pushed on down the creaky wooden stairs. He finally rounded the corner, and… whatever he’d expected to see, this wasn’t it.

The basement was nearly empty save for the flickering light overhead, not even carpeted.  A man who had to be Morality was curled in on himself in the far corner, metal cuffs that weren’t attached to anything on his wrists and a heavy chain connecting his ankle to the floor.  The cuffs were glowing slightly, and Anxiety remembered what he’d been told about their special properties. He also remembered the schedule of meals he’d been instructed on and realized with a pang of something like guilt that the man was painfully thin.  They must be giving him the bare minimum he needed to survive, if that, and he was visibly shivering in his short-sleeved blue polo.

As Anxiety edged a little closer, not entirely convinced he wasn’t somehow still dangerous, Morality stared at a spot on the floor.  He seemed to be looking at nothing or lost in his thoughts, but Anxiety was familiar with the practice of watching carefully from the corner of one’s eye without risking actually looking up.  He coughed hesitantly to make it clear he really did want his attention, and Morality’s head snapped up.

“Oh!  Didn’t see you there, kiddo-” he flinched- “I mean- uh- s-sorry if I disturbed you!”  His upbeat tone was as brittle as his smile. Anxiety could easily see past both to the fear in his eyes- that was sort of his whole area of expertise, after all.  It was also clear that he’d been crying.

“You didn’t,” he finally managed to say through his shock.  He didn’t miss the way Morality's shoulders almost sagged in relief, before his next thought made his defenses go back up.  “I just- lunch?”

The man he’d been afraid to come near just minutes ago looked like he might start crying again at the mention of food.  Anxiety approached him slowly, no sudden movements, set the sandwich and water on the floor next to him and backed off again.  He grabbed them and then stopped, looking uncertainly at Anxiety, who was still hovering five feet away.

“Go on, they’re gonna kill me if I don’t keep you alive,” he said, finally committing to sit down on the floor.  Morality seemed less tense once he wasn’t in a position to quickly reach him, and hesitated only a second before starting to eat.  Anxiety had been avoiding looking directly at him, treating him like a skittish cat, but now he took a closer look and realized his arms and face were bruised and even cut up in places.  He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again, looking down at the floor. He waited until the other had finished eating and taken a long drink of water before saying, “You’re really Morality?  I thought you’d be more… y’know… they said you were powerful.”

Morality laughed almost sadly, putting his arms around his knees.  He’d opened his overall posture a little, still wary but no longer one wrong move away from panic.  “Not so much anymore. ...You can call me Patton. What about you, who are you?”

“Oh- uh- I’m Anxiety.”  He was caught slightly off-guard by the question.

“What about your name, though?”  Morality- _Patton-_ immediately realized he was probably overstepping and flinched, slapping a hand over his mouth.  “Sorry, sorry, I-I’m asking too many questions, aren’t I, I’ll stop!”

Anxiety had never been asked his actual name before.  He’d never even thought about it; none of the others went by anything but their functions, after all.  It would have been fair to assume he didn’t have one, but it was apparently there in the back of his mind somewhere, and he caught it on the tip of his tongue.   _Virgil._  His name was Virgil.  He bit down on it, keeping it trapped.  There wasn’t much that was truly his, and he was going to keep this secret in case it could somehow be taken from him.

“Just Anxiety,” he muttered.  “I’m gonna… take this back to the kitchen now.”  He grabbed the now-empty dishes and hurried upstairs.

“Bye,” Patton said quietly as he left.  He felt bad for ignoring him, but this had all been a lot; he needed to get back to somewhere things made sense.

_So,_ he thought, once he was sitting at the kitchen table.  Morality didn’t hate him, and he didn’t seem even a _little_ dangerous, and his name was Patton, and… and they weren’t just keeping him safely out of the way like Virgil (it felt weird calling himself that, but good-weird) had been told.  The others, his housemates, they were hurting him. He didn’t know what to do.

On the one hand, he had clear instructions, and if he didn’t follow them he’d be in trouble, and there was that stupid loyalty he couldn’t seem to help developing even though he knew they probably couldn’t care less about him or anyone else.  On the other hand, Patton had just shown more interest in him in ten minutes than either of those assholes had in the past several months, so why should he be on _their_ side?  But then on the _other_ other hand maybe he really _was_ dangerous and only wanted to manipulate him or something.  He didn’t know what to think.

Virgil drifted through the rest of the day lost in thought.  If he wasn’t going back and forth on the dilemma he’d found himself with, he was thinking about the name he’d never realized he had, whispering it into his cupped hands like he was telling himself a secret.  In fact, that was how he fell asleep.

* * *

 

He woke up late in the morning, and was content for a few seconds, warm and sleepy, until he remembered the previous day’s events and sat up abruptly, feeling uneasy.  He got dressed and then checked every room in the house to make absolutely sure he was still the only one home, coming last to the kitchen, where he planned to maybe make some toast.  He stopped before he’d made it halfway across the room. The basement door hadn’t closed all the way yesterday, and he could hear something from downstairs. Patton was crying again, so hard Virgil’s lungs ached sympathetically.  He hesitated, then put some bread in the toaster and slipped through the door onto the stairs.

He didn’t remember to turn the light on until he was at the bottom of the stairs, and it was a heartwrenching sight that greeted him when he did.  Patton had one arm around his knees to keep himself balled up as tight as he could manage and the other hand clamped over his mouth, trying to muffle the noise he was making without much success as tears streamed down his face.  When the light came on he jumped and looked up, clearly scared, and curled into himself even further, if that was possible.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, “I’m sorry, please, I w-was trying to b-be quiet, I’m sorry I’m sorry please don’t please--”

“Hey, hey, calm down, I’m not- shit- you gotta breathe, can you try to breathe with me for a minute?”  Virgil knelt in front of him, not touching him, and tried to show him the same breathing exercise he sometimes used himself.  A few minutes later he was no longer hyperventilating, just quietly crying, shoulders hunched and face buried in his knees.

“I-I’m sorry,” he said again, muffled.  “Just- just leave- I’ll be quiet now, I promise...”  He trailed off, his voice too shaky to continue.

“I’m not gonna--”  Virgil remembered his toast.  “I mean- I’ll be right back, okay?”  He jumped up and ran back to the kitchen.

Fuck his instructions, he needed more toast.  And tea. Toast and tea, that was good. He put butter on two slices of toast and jelly on the other two, just to cover his bases, because he had no idea what Patton preferred and he _really_ needed to get more food in him.

He struggled not to drop anything as he came down the stairs again.  Patton seemed to be ignoring him, and as he got closer Virgil realized he was trembling.  Still crying and ashamed of it? Well, Virgil had been there, but he still needed to eat.

“Uh… Patton?”

He tensed, refusing to move.  Virgil sat next to him and set the things he was carrying on the floor between them, and he flinched at every little clinking noise.

“Patton, look up.”

He raised his head slowly and did a double take at the stack of toast.  “What…?”

“We’re having breakfast.”

He looked nervously from the plate to Virgil to the stairs.  “I- are you sure? I-it’s not… I ate yesterday, I’m n-not supposed to eat today…”

“Well, I’m the only one here all week, and I say you’re eating, so.”

He hesitated a moment, but finally took a piece of toast.  “You’re… really not mad at me for- earlier?”

_“Jesus,_ Patton, why _would_ I be?”  He wasn’t mad at _him,_ but he _was_ increasingly furious with the other dark sides, who had apparently kidnapped the man, locked him up in their basement, hurt him and practically starved him, and then proceeded to punish him if they heard him crying about it.  And he was furious with himself, too, for never questioning that whatever they were doing must be for their own collective safety.

“I… I don’t know, anyone who comes down here usually is.  I’m not supposed to make noise.” He met Virgil’s eyes for the first time.  “But… I think you’re different, maybe.”

“I’m really not.”  Virgil was no better than the others, as they often reminded him.  Maybe worse, because they were trying to help Thomas advance in their own ways, and all he did was hold everyone back.

“Yes you are.  You- you showed me how to breathe and you didn’t get mad at me for being too loud and you’re giving me food even though you could get in trouble.  You’re the only person who’s been nice to me in months, Anxiety.”

“Your expectations are just unbelievably low.  I’m a coward. When the others come back… I’m not gonna be able to be nice anymore.”  He hated saying that, but it was true, and he didn’t want to give Patton false hope.

Patton looked at him sadly, whispering, “I think you’re a good person,” so quietly Virgil didn’t think he was supposed to hear it.  They were both silent for a few minutes. Virgil slowly, slowly nibbled at one triangle of buttered toast, trying to let Patton have as much as he wanted.  He didn’t have much appetite in the morning anyway.

“Is this good?” he finally asked.  “I mean, I didn’t know what you were gonna want on it, so I just did everything.”

“It’s great.”  He smiled. “I… I really like this jelly…”  Suddenly he was crying again, biting his lip as he tried to make himself stop with no effect.  “Sorry, just, now I’m thinking about m-my friends… I- I just wanna go _home,”_ he barely whispered.

“You don’t have to apologize for crying, I think you have a pretty good fuckin’ reason.”  Virgil scooted a little closer, pushing things out of the way so he wouldn’t knock the tea over or anything, and uncertainly put his hand on top of Patton’s.  He wasn’t super experienced at comforting people, but that seemed right. “Do you… wanna talk about it? Them? Your friends? I mean- it’s not like I have anything better to do today.”

He perked up a little.  “Okay, if you really don’t mind listening!”  Patton had a genuine smile for the first time Virgil has seen as he talked about his friends- Logic and Creativity, or Logan and Roman, as they were apparently also called- and the memories he had of them, memories he’d been clinging to since he’d been taken here to keep from losing all hope.  He thought Virgil would like Logan, and more incredibly, he thought _Logan_ would like _Virgil._  Roman he wasn’t so sure about, but he was confident they would warm up to each other eventually.  Virgil didn’t know what to say. He’d always thought of the ‘light’ sides with a mixture of fear and awe, and an absolute certainty that they would hate him.

“They’ll come for me,” he said softly, after a brief pause.  “I know they will.”

“Patton, I don’t wanna like, crush your hopes or whatever, but… Deceit has this place pretty well hidden.  Do you think they can even find the house?” He hated that he couldn’t avoid pointing out the flaws in what might have been the last bit of hope Patton had, but he was Anxiety and that was what he _did,_ whether he enjoyed it or not.

“They _will,”_ he insisted, voice breaking.  “They will. They have to.”

Virgil stared down at his hands.  “They… they sound like great people.”

“Yeah.  They are.”

He swallowed.  “I hope they come for you soon.”  If they came, he’d help them. He would suffer for it later, but he’d stall the others somehow, make sure they got Patton safely the hell out of there.  He didn’t deserve this, and Virgil wished he were strong enough to break him out himself, but his power wasn’t anywhere near Deceit’s, who he could tell had made the cuffs.

“Me too.”

Some time passed as they sat in silence.  Suddenly, Virgil remembered something. “Shit, I have _work_ to do.”  He glanced at Patton.  “Which you’d probably rather I didn’t, but Thomas could get hurt, okay?  I gotta go and- do you want me to leave the light on?”

Patton nodded.  “I… don’t like being alone in the dark,” he admitted.  Virgil nodded back and left it on for him as he went upstairs.

Back in his room, he found an intimidating stack of papers waiting for him.  There had been entire social interactions Thomas hadn’t been particularly worried about while his Anxiety had been distracted.  Well, better late than never, time to make him remember all the things he’d screwed up. That way he at least might not do them again _next_ time.  It took him longer to sort through everything than it really should have, because his thoughts kept drifting back to his own current worries, and by the time he finished it was almost eight PM.

He had to help Patton somehow, but he _couldn’t,_ but he _had_ to.  If he left the house Deceit would know, since he was the one who’d warded it, so going to get help was out of the question, and so was calling anyone.  All he had to work with was this week and whatever he could sneak down to him after that. He was good at navigating the house quietly, he could probably get food to him sometimes, as long as it wasn’t crunchy or anything.  The drawers might risk giving him away, though, so he took as much as he thought he could get away with claiming he’d eaten in the course of the week and stashed it in the mini-fridge in his room for later. Now he could get back to worrying about today.

He was going to make dinner for both of them, of course.  Under normal circumstances he might have just decided he wasn’t hungry and gone back to his work, maybe done a little advance preparation for things that might go wrong tomorrow, but that wouldn’t do this time.  Unfortunately, no one around here was particularly good at taking care of themselves, so the best he could find to make was instant ramen. Whatever, it was something.

Patton seemed surprised to see him again in the same day.  “Anxiety, you’re back!” Surprised, but happy about it, which was not a reaction Virgil was accustomed to.  …Well, yeah, of course he’d be happy to see him, he was the one bringing him food. It wasn’t personal or anything.

“Sorry, I know it’s not very good.  This house is full of assholes who don’t know how to cook.”

Patton gave him an almost wry look.  “Well, I can definitely tell you it’s better than nothing.  Which is what I’d normally be getting today.”

“Right.”  Virgil looked down, remembering that _stupid_ list of instructions he’d been given.  Food every other day, we wouldn’t want him discorporating on us.  Don’t let him talk to you, he’ll try to gain your sympathy. (He’d thrown that one out immediately, as Patton had his sympathy the second he’d seen him anyway.)  Don’t touch him and don’t show weakness (by which they meant human decency), don’t give him anything because he might turn it against you somehow. Every line increased Virgil’s desire to summon the two who’d written it back here and deck them like they deserved, but that wasn’t going to help.  It would just mean they were here to hurt him again.

Patton was quiet, tired.  Crying for half the day could do that to a person.  They both sat in silence for a bit after finishing the cheap noodles.  Patton wrapped his arms around himself, and Virgil realized he was shivering.  Shit.

“Here,” he said before he could think about it.  He shrugged out of his hoodie and tossed it to Patton, who didn’t quite catch it.  It landed in his lap, and he looked at it and at Virgil, confused. “You, uh, you look cold.  Put it on.”

“Oh!”  He pulled it on slowly, watching in case Virgil changed his mind, and practically melted into the warmth.  He hadn’t been warm since… since he got here. It was already a size too big on Virgil and so practically swallowed him, but he liked that.  He pulled the hood up and the sleeves down over his hands with a content sigh. He could barely feel the chill that permeated the basement now.  “Thank you, Anxiety- uh- when are you going to want it back?”

“Eh, you can keep it, at least until the others get back and we have to hide all evidence that I was even a little bit nice to you.  I have long sleeves, it’s fine.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”  He closed his eyes and wrapped the zipper edges tightly around himself, suddenly sleepy.  Maybe like this he could actually _get_ some sleep, and not wake up shivering violently every hour or so as his body forced him to move and get his circulation going again so he wouldn’t freeze.  It got _cold_ down here at night, and he wasn’t sure it hadn’t been designed that way.  By now he probably had circles under his eyes to rival Anxiety’s makeup, he thought.  “Is it okay if I… just kinda… sleep now?”

“Yeah- yeah, go ahead.  I’m just gonna take all this up.  Get some sleep, you look like you need it.”

He curled up on the floor, hood blocking the light that had been left on again.  He was so _tired._  He hadn’t really let himself relax since he’d been here, part of him always on guard against someone coming in to hurt him, even in the middle of the night- it had happened a few times, he had good reason.  Now that he knew they weren’t going to, he was asleep in under a minute.

* * *

 

He woke to Anxiety hovering nearby and a smell of food, and resisted the urge to genuinely ask _But didn’t we just have food last night?_  Instead he went with a mumbled “How long…?” as he pushed himself to a sitting position and rubbed his eyes.

“Like, fourteen hours.  You must have been really tired.”  Anxiety pushed a plate towards him.  “Pancakes?”

“You mean you actually made… aww, Anxiety, you didn’t have to do that!”

He gave a tiny smile, the first Patton had seen, and rubbed the back of his neck.  “Yeah, well. It’s kinda all I _can_ do, so…”  He didn’t say it, but the understanding hung in the air between them that they had to make the most of what little time they had before Deceit and Malice returned.  “I thought you might like something sweet.”

Patton nodded quickly, mouth too full of the pancakes to actually respond.

“So, uh… is there… anything I could bring you to do?  Like, do you want a book or something? ‘Cause I still have to do my job, I don’t think Thomas was very happy with me yesterday.”

“Hmm… Yeah, that would be good.  Or some paper to draw on, maybe?”

“You draw?”

“I mean, not very _well,_ but I think it’s fun.”

He hesitated for a moment before saying, “Me too.  I’ll go get my stuff.”

He returned with a sketchbook, a handful of pencils and a box of markers.  “I mostly just make these, like, designs,” he said, showing Patton a page taken up entirely by a big spiral shaded in a way that made him feel like he was going to fall into the paper.  “It’s relaxing.” He carefully tore out a piece of paper and handed it to Patton, sitting on the floor next to him and spreading the materials out in front of them both.

“What happened to that work you needed to do?”

He shrugged.  “It can wait a little.”

Patton accepted this and crossed his legs, leaning forward to get to the markers.  “We should draw each other,” he suggested.

“Yeah, okay.”

They fell silent as they worked, the only sound in the room that of them drawing.  Then Patton shifted nervously and asked, “Are… we friends? Am I your friend now?”

Virgil’s hand stopped moving.  “I… I don’t know if I’ve earned that.  I mean, you’ve only known me for like three days, and…”  And he only thought Virgil was nice because the other two had set the bar so low it was underground.

“And I don’t even know your real name, yeah, but… never mind, it’s fine, sorry.  You don’t have to- to be my friend if you don’t want to.” Damn it, he looked so sad now.  Virgil remembered suddenly that he was the _only_ person in Patton’s life right now who he could possibly call a friend.  He bit his lip, looking away, and mumbled something under his breath too quietly to hear.

“What?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and repeated in a rush, “MynameisVirgil.”  He looked up at Patton nervously and found him smiling.

“Virgil,” he echoed.  “I like it. Thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah.  Well. I-if we’re gonna be friends…”  He hid his face behind his sketchbook, returning to drawing while Patton made happy noises at him.  What a _criminally_ precious man.

“I’m done,” Patton announced after a while.

“Cool, I almost am.”  Virgil made a few more marks and finally decided to stop before he ruined it.  They both revealed their drawings.

Patton’s was… objectively bad, there was no way around it.  Only slightly above stick-figure level. It was cute, though, a recognizable Virgil with a small smile on his face, and a bonus Patton to go with him, wearing his jacket.  “It's both of us,” he explained, “because I didn’t wanna be done so much earlier than you.”

Virgil’s drawing was sketchy, never committing to one line when he could use five overlapping ones, but much more realistic, with shading and everything, though no color.  Patton looked at it and winced.

“Yeah, sorry, I know it’s not very--”

“No, it’s a good drawing!  It’s just- I look _terrible_ right now, don’t I?”

“Yeah, kinda,” Virgil admitted.  “Better than a couple days ago, though.  You haven’t flinched away from me in a while.”

“Yeah.”  In fact, he proceeded to do the opposite, leaning on Virgil’s shoulder to get a better look at the drawing.  Virgil stiffened, but slowly relaxed again, letting him stay.

He never did leave to do his work.  In fact, he was still there when they both realized it was nighttime.  He set down the geometric pattern he’d been going over with a pen. “It’s late, I should go to bed.”

Patton hummed, but didn’t let go.  Leaning had somehow turned into clinging to his arm while his head rested on Virgil's shoulder.  He really was comfortable with him now. “If you have to, I guess…”

Honestly?  Virgil didn’t want to leave him alone down here any more than he wanted to be left.  “You know what, I’m gonna be right back.” Patton released him reluctantly and he gathered up his things and ran upstairs.

The sketchbook went in his desk, but the drawings they’d made got folded up and hidden somewhere safe.  He wasn’t taking any chances on having someone find them. Then he bundled up the blankets from his bed and dragged them downstairs with him.

“I’m staying,” he announced, dumping them on Patton.

“Wha- really?”

“Yep.”  He spread one blanket on the floor for them to be on top of, and the other over them once they were situated.  He sat against the wall, insisting he could sleep just fine that way, while Patton curled up with his head in Virgil’s lap, and the blanket went around Virgil’s shoulders and over all of Patton.  In reality, Virgil knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep well down here regardless, so it didn’t really matter what position he stayed awake in, but he didn’t need to _say_ that.

“‘Night, Virgil,” Patton muttered, already sleepy.

Hearing his actual name said by another actual person gave Virgil a warm feeling in his chest, and he smiled into the darkness.  “‘Night, Patton.”

* * *

 

Patton drifted back into consciousness feeling so warm and cozy and _safe_ he wondered for a moment if everything had been a bad dream.  He was lying on someone’s legs, and their hand was in his hair, and he was afraid to move in case that went away because it _hadn’t_ been a dream, actually, and he was soaking up the contact like a very lonely sponge.

“Hey,” Virgil said in greeting, noticing he was awake.

Patton mumbled something incoherent and pressed his face into Virgil’s stomach, making him almost laugh.

“You gotta get off me so I can get us breakfast, this is literally the _one thing_ I’m actually _supposed_ to do for you.”

“...no…”

Virgil shook his head with an amused sigh.  He slid his hand under Patton’s head and scooted away, setting him back down gently since he still refused to sit up.  “C’mon, what do you want me to make?”

“Oh… whatever you want is fine,” he said, before pulling the blanket over his head in an attempt to go back to sleep.

“Then I’m making eggs.”

“Mkay.”

Virgil went up to the kitchen and started scrambling some eggs for them, but he couldn’t keep away the feeling that something was about to go wrong.  Yes, he literally _always_ felt like that, but it was stronger than usual.  He tried to put it down to the fact that he hadn’t slept much, or some other unrelated factor making him feel weird, but part of his brain insisted it wasn’t any of that.  He turned up the temperature on the stove to finish cooking as fast as possible and hurried downstairs when he was done.

He’d just sat down when it happened.  From upstairs came the sound of a key turning in the lock.  Virgil jumped and waved his blankets out of existence entirely in a panic, because having to re-create them later was better than being caught like this.  “Give me back my jacket,” he hissed at Patton, who quickly complied, his hands shaking as he gave it over. “It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, looking not at all like he believed it.  “This is something I’m _supposed_ to do, just- just pretend like I haven’t been so nice to you, okay?”

“Anxiety,” Deceit called from upstairs, “where are you?”

“Down here,” Virgil yelled back, forcing his voice steady.  He moved to a safe distance away from Patton with a last reassuring squeeze of his hand.

Deceit practically bounded down the stairs.  He seemed happy about something, which Virgil distrusted on a very deep level.  “Oh, good, then I can tell you both at once.” He turned to Patton with a sinister smile, while the latter tried to press himself into the corner.  “Sorry to break it to you, Morality, but it seems your friends don’t care about you as much as you thought they did. They wouldn’t accept our _perfectly reasonable_ offer of a deal to get you back.”

“Oh, is _that_ what you were off doing?” Virgil asked, as if he didn’t particularly care, trying to keep Deceit’s full attention off Patton.

“Yes, but _unfortunately,_ they didn’t agree that his safe return was worth giving us access to the main area of the mind.”

“That prince pulled a _sword_ on me,” Malice shouted, coming down the stairs loudly.  “Can you believe that?”

“You probably deserved it,” Virgil replied.  He could see Patton in his peripheral vision, trying very hard to become invisible or at least a smaller target.

“I should have made him pay for that insult!  And also all the _other_ insults!”

“God, you’re such a drama queen.  Good luck beating up the guy with a sword, I guess.  Pretty sure you’ll die though.” Even without having his phone out, Virgil had achieved an air of mostly ignoring the conversation to look at his phone.

“Which is why I didn’t actually try it, asshole.  Guess I’ll have to find something _else_ to do with all this anger.”  He looked straight at Patton, who shut his eyes and curled up tighter in his corner with a small whimper.  “Dee, why don’t you take Anxiety upstairs and tell him about our little adventure? I know you two don’t like to see blood.”

Virgil forced his voice to come out normally.  He was the weakest, there was nothing he could do except uselessly give himself away as working against them.  Which might distract in the moment, true, but would only make things much worse in the long run. “So should I put his eggs in the fridge for later, or…?  Look, you gave me one job and I’m gonna do it.”

“Yeah, whatever, I don’t care, just _leave now.”_

Deceit made a “yikes” face and grabbed Virgil, who scooped up the dishes before following him out, not letting himself look back.

Neither of them said anything for a minute after they got into the kitchen, and then they both spoke at the same time.

“So, adventure, huh?”

“He’s not afraid of you.”

Virgil blinked.  “What?”

“Morality.  He let you sit near him without backing away.  He’s never let either of _us_ do that.”

“I brought him food a few times and didn’t hurt him, it’s really not that difficult to get him to trust you if you’re not a _complete piece of shit,”_ Virgil said with some venom.

Deceit gave him a look.  “Has he been getting to you?”

“No, I have _fucking eyes._  You told me you were keeping him out of our way so we could actually have some influence, not letting Mal use him as a goddamn punching bag.”

“I… it’s not exactly what I _meant_ to happen,” Deceit admitted.  “But- I mean, would you rather have it be _us?”_

Virgil glared at the table and said nothing.  The answer was yes, of _course_ he’d rather deal with Malice’s rage himself than know Patton was, but saying so wouldn’t end well.  “I’d _rather_ he get a stress ball like a normal fucking person, but I guess the chances of _that_ are pretty low.”  Downstairs, Patton screamed.  Virgil flinched. “I-I’m going to my room.  Tell me when he’s done.”

* * *

 

It was almost midnight when a soft knock came at Virgil’s door.  He shot to his feet, shoving the drawings under his pillow, and found Deceit outside, shifting uncomfortably.

“He finally went to bed, and if he asks I never spoke to you,” he said, turning to go into his own room with a disgruntled swoosh of his cape.

Virgil nodded, closed the door and pressed his hands into his eyes.  Nothing he could do would be enough, but he had to do something. His gaze landed on the mini-fridge.  That was something. And… yes, he had a stash of first aid supplies in a box under his bed. Bandages would be too obvious, but he stuffed antibiotic ointment, water and a clean rag into one of his deep pockets, and a small flashlight and an entire largish bagel in the other.  There was a reason he liked this hoodie so much.

He stepped out into the hall and closed his door silently.  The floorboards could be creaky, but he knew where to step, and made it downstairs without making a sound.

“Patton,” he whispered into the darkness.  “Patton?”

The only response he got was a tiny, stifled sob.  He flicked his flashlight on and found Patton crumpled on the floor as if he’d fallen there and simply curled up and accepted it.  He flinched violently away from the light, and Virgil caught a barely-there, whispered “please.”

“Shh, it’s just me,” he whispered back.  “I’m not gonna hurt you.” He knelt and took Patton’s hands gently, coaxing him to sit up.  He was shivering. The flashlight didn’t do much, but it wasn’t hard to notice the fresh bruises blooming and smeared tracks of blood.  His lower lip had been split open and started bleeding again as he tried to speak. “God, Patton, I’m sorry,” Virgil breathed, gathering him into his arms.  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop him.” Patton buried his face in Virgil’s shoulder, clinging to his shirt and shaking with muffled sobs. “I-I’m here now. I’ve got you.”  He rubbed a hand over Patton’s back, but didn’t dare use much pressure for fear of hurting him.

“I’m okay,” Patton whispered eventually, rubbing at his eyes and struggling to sit up again.  “I-it’s not that bad, really.”

“Lies.  Take your shirt off and take this,” Virgil said while pulling everything out of his pockets and handing Patton the bagel.

“Oh- uh- thanks.  ...Do I have to?”

“I can’t help you if you don’t.”

Lifting his arms that much hurt like hell, but since Virgil insisted, Patton bit his lip and struggled out of his shirt.  Virgil draped his hoodie around Patton’s shoulders, more than making up for the loss of warmth, and examined the damage. He tried not to let himself be distracted by how clearly visible his ribs were.  There wasn’t much he could do for the extensive bruising except point out that lying on the floor would probably function as a full-body ice pack, but he at least knew how to deal with cuts. He poured a bit of water onto one corner of his rag and started dabbing the blood away gently, starting with Patton’s face.  There was a slash across his cheekbone that came perilously close to his eye, which had to be a painful combination with all the crying. While he was working, Patton tore little pieces off the bagel, trying to avoid pulling his lip open again.

It took nearly half an hour, but eventually he was all cleaned up, ointment smeared over the cuts that would be hidden by his shirt and not conspicuous.  He felt a little more like a human being and less like a used-up piece of trash tossed on the ground. Virgil helped him get his shirt back on and stayed with him until he finished eating, and then a while after that, because he didn’t have the heart to take the hoodie back and leave Patton alone and cold in the dark for the rest of the night.  Especially when Patton fell asleep leaning on him, exhausted from the long and painful day he’d had. He couldn’t stay forever, though, because if they were found like this in the morning it would be _bad,_ and eventually he made himself reclaim his jacket, put everything back in his pockets and transfer the sleeping Patton as carefully as possible from his arms to the floor.  At least it didn’t wake him up.

* * *

 

The next day, Virgil finally managed to get the details of what they’d been up to out of his stupid shitty housemates.  They’d arranged a meeting with the light sides, which had taken a day in itself because it required making contact, working out a suitably neutral location and convincing them it wasn’t a trap.  He had a feeling they had refrained from telling him what they were doing beforehand because they knew he would tell them it was a dumb idea, which he still maintained was true, even though he was glad they’d left to do it and in fact wished they had just stayed gone.

Anyway, Roman had eventually agreed to conjure an actual building to meet in on neutral ground so they weren’t just standing around talking in a field, not that the more businesslike surroundings ended up helping anything much.  That had taken _another_ day, because everyone wanted input and to make sure _he_ wasn’t going to make it a trap.  Virgil was starting to understand why Thomas was so indecisive all the time.  Two days ago they’d finally had the actual meeting, and it had not exactly gone well.

Deceit had done most of the talking on their side, since Malice didn’t have the best diplomacy skills, or like, a filter, at all.  He’d informed the other two that they had their friend Morality, he was alive, and they would return him in exchange for control over Thomas’ decisions.  Logan regretfully told them he couldn’t agree to that, especially knowing it was something Patton himself wouldn’t agree to, and would they consider a _different_ deal?  Deceit wouldn’t, because getting more control was the sole reason he’d taken Patton in the first place.

They’d gone back and forth fruitlessly for several minutes, Logan growing more visibly upset despite his efforts as the chances of getting his friend back without compromising everything he cared about dropped.  Had Roman been the one talking he would have caved a long time ago, and as it was he was at risk of tearing his sash if he kept twisting it so hard, his face clearly showing his extreme distress. Eventually, Malice got frustrated enough with the lack of progress to contribute to the discussion in his own way, which consisted mostly of insulting them both and taunting them with descriptions of Patton’s steadily worsening condition, how weak he was, how he cried at night and only stopped when one of them got annoyed enough to go shut him up.  This was the point where Roman pulled a sword on him, and the meeting collapsed from there, causing them to return sooner than expected.

“So what I’m gathering from this is that you did in fact deserve the sword thing.”  Virgil was on the arm of the couch while the other two sat on it like normal people, or at least he was until Malice shoved him hard enough to knock him off it.  He managed not to land flat on his back, as this wasn’t the first time it had happened. He really should have known better than to sit up there by now. “Ow, fuck you, you _did!”_

“Shut up, you weren’t even important enough to bring along at all.  You would’ve fucked it up worse than me.”

This was where Virgil would normally back down and maybe internalize that comment, but today he was too pissed off for that.  He shot back, “Or maybe Dee only took _you_ along because he knew if you were the one home alone you’d _kill our bargaining chip.”_

_“Wow,_ this is great, I _love_ when you two fight over nothing,” Deceit muttered, scooting down the couch away from the two sides glaring daggers at each other.  Virgil wished he could say out loud the reasons this was not in fact nothing to him.

“So, what, you think I have no self-control whatsoever?”

“I _know_ you don’t, actually.  Also, if you try to punch me or otherwise throw a tantrum right now you’re gonna be proving my point.”

Malice glared at him for a few more seconds, then turned sharply and stalked off to his room.

“...Are you _sure_ it’s a good idea to wind him up like that?”

“Mind your own business, Dee,” Virgil snapped, leaving as well.

He went back to his room and paced for almost half an hour.  It had been less than a day and he already didn’t know how much longer he could coexist with Malice before truly snapping, having seen what he’d done to Patton.  And what he would probably do _again,_ though hopefully not quite so badly.  The worst thing was that Virgil had no excuse to go downstairs at any point today.  It wasn’t a food day, even though Patton hadn’t actually gotten to eat _yesterday_ as far as anyone but him knew.  Fortunately(?) he had two days worth of work piled up to distract him until night came and he could sneak something down again.  He had bread and cheese and a little bit of meat, he could make a decent sandwich.

He waited until there was no way anyone would be awake anymore to leave his room.  Patton was, though, when he finally got down there.

_“Virgil,”_ he whispered, relief evident in his voice.  “I was afraid you weren’t gonna come…”

“Of course I was gonna come.”  Virgil got down next to him and hugged him.  “I’m always gonna come if I can, okay? Is that why you were awake?  You need sleep, Pat, you can’t be staying up to wait for me.” He seemed to get little enough rest as it was, and Virgil wasn’t about to be responsible for reducing that even further.

“I _tried,”_ he protested, turning and pressing himself into Virgil so that the rest of what he said was muffled.  “I was just- it’s cold and everything still hurts and I couldn’t sleep…”

“Right.  Sorry. Uh- how about you eat this and then I’ll try and help you get some sleep?”

Patton nodded, sitting up and unwrapping the sandwich from the napkin Virgil had it in.

“I’ve been in my room all day, so I have to ask- have they left you alone today, or…”

“...Mostly.”  Patton looked away, tried to smile to reassure him.  “Look, my day wasn’t great, I’d rather hear about yours.”

Virgil shrugged.  “Did some work. Worried about you.  Um- did you ever hear what actually happened with your friends?”

“...Kinda.  I know they… I’m _glad_ they didn’t agree to that,” he whispered intensely.  “I- I’m proud of them. I’m okay with being here forever if… as long as it keeps _them_ away from Thomas.”

“But you won’t be.  Your friends are gonna come find you and take you home,” Virgil said, not believing it himself.

“Yeah.  I know.”  He looked down, tearing up.  “Home…”

Virgil shifted and held his arms out, and Patton leaned into him with a sigh.  “Let’s see if you can sleep now.”

He leaned against the wall and held Patton close to his chest, feeling his breathing slow and even out.  Good. It seemed all it ever took to knock him out instantly was a little warmth and a feeling of safety, which kind of made Virgil deeply sad thinking about how little sleep he got.  Sad, and really fucking angry. He wrapped his arms protectively around Patton’s thin frame and buried his face in his hair, wishing he could _actually_ protect him from the others, but all he could really do was come in after they fucked him up and try to provide comfort.  Not that he could even do _that_ right, because he had to be back in his own room before five to avoid suspicion, and he had no idea if Patton actually stayed asleep when he left or woke within minutes from the cold.  He felt so _useless._

* * *

 

Days went by, then weeks, and not much changed.  Virgil used up his secret food stash and started pretending to make himself lunch, only to take it back to his room and save it for Patton, who definitely needed it more.  He also successfully became the only one to take the “official” meals down, on the grounds that Patton was actually willing to eat in his presence, so he could stick around instead of having to go back for the dishes later.  On the grounds of efficiency he got away with making two servings of the same thing for both of them, then let Patton have almost all of it once they were alone. It was even a good opportunity to cautiously let their hands touch, watching the stairs the whole time so they could be several feet apart in an instant, because Patton was a very physically affectionate man and growing desperate for human contact that wasn’t violent.

Deceit wasn’t fooled, that much went without saying; he was the _expert_ on doing things sneaky-like and he definitely knew Virgil was helping their prisoner in secret.  Fortunately, he made it a point never to give a fuck one way or the other about anything that didn’t affect him directly.  He overlooked Malice using Patton for stress relief and Virgil putting him back together afterwards equally, and if he almost walked in on either occurence he pretended not to have seen anything.  He couldn’t care less what happened to the man, frankly, as long as he didn’t escape or die.

Close calls with Malice were much, _much_ more dangerous, and Virgil started keeping careful tabs on where he was in the house, even more so than usual- now he didn’t just have himself to worry about.  Sometimes he was able to redirect his attention when he looked particularly murderous, and other times he failed and spent the rest of the day blaming himself for whatever happened.  Sometimes they only ended up arguing and Malice left even angrier, and Virgil apologized endlessly in the basement those nights while applying firm pressure with a cloth to stop the bleeding.

He should have seen it coming, he should have been prepared, but Virgil was so preoccupied with trying to keep Patton alive, he forgot to worry about himself.  He knew Deceit knew, and he also knew Dee was an unapologetic self-serving bastard who wouldn’t know basic decency if it slithered up and injected him with venom, and yet he didn’t think anything of it when there was a knock on his door one morning accompanied by “Anx, would you mind coming out to talk?”

He came out of his room with a muttered “what do you want at this hour,” that hour being around ten AM, only to feel a gloved hand over his face, cutting off his air supply, and another trying to pin his arms.  Naturally, he fought back. Deceit ended up stumbling away with blood dripping from his nose and the beginnings of a nasty black eye, but he wasn’t alone. Someone grabbed his shoulder and practically threw him, and Virgil went still when he found himself against the wall with a knife at his throat.

“Don’t be like that, we just want to _talk,”_ Malice said, applying just enough pressure with the point of his dagger to terrify Virgil without quite breaking his skin.

“A-about?”  He wasn’t stupid, he knew what it was about, but there was always hope--

“You and _Morality,”_ Malice spat.  “Dee tells me you’ve been going behind our backs, sneaking him extra food.  Giving him the strength to keep _blocking my influence._  I knew you were too nice around him, but you’ve always been soft, so I’d just put it down to your inherent weakness.  Never took you for a _traitor,_ Anxiety.”

“I- I’m not- I-”  He caught Deceit’s eyes over Malice’s shoulder and shot him a glare.   _Sorry,_ Deceit mouthed at him, even though he wasn’t.   _It was you or me._

“Not what?  I can’t _wait_ to hear your excuse.”

Virgil squeezed his eyes shut and stopped breathing as the knifepoint pressed harder.  Malice didn’t seem to notice what he was doing until a drop of blood swelled up. He backed off and Virgil gasped and stumbled forward, eyes still closed, pressing a hand to his throat and trying not to freak out.  Logically he knew a tiny prick like that wasn’t actually going to do any damage, but his brain didn’t always listen to reason especially well.

“Why don’t we move this conversation somewhere more comfortable?” Deceit suggested smoothly, taking Virgil’s arm and leading him into his room.  He didn’t protest, mostly because he recognized the futility.

* * *

 

“Anxiety.”

Virgil forced himself to look up.  He was sat in a chair in the middle of Deceit’s room, wondering if this was how he died.  Malice crouched down in front of him, mock-sympathetic.

“I’ll be honest with you.  We’ve tolerated each other for long enough that I’m actually somewhat attached.  I don’t want to have to get rid of you, Anx, and I assume from the frankly pitiful look on your face that you agree.  So-” he stood up again, drawing Virgil’s attention with him- “I don’t think you really _meant_ what you did, right?  It wasn’t _your_ fault.  Morality got in your head and made you think what you were doing was _right,_ isn’t that true?”

Virgil said nothing.  He couldn’t bring himself to agree, but he was afraid of what would happen if he dared to _dis_ agree.

“Let’s just take silence as a _yes,”_ Deceit offered helpfully.

Malice smiled, which was highly unnerving at the best of times.  “That’s what I thought. You’re just _confused_ right now, but don’t worry, we can fix that.”

Virgil’s brow furrowed, and he flicked his eyes over to Deceit.  He wouldn’t return the look, and seemed very uncomfortable.

“Dee- the lights?”

Deceit snapped his fingers, and the room darkened unnaturally.  Virgil couldn’t make out the walls anymore, and no light came through the cracks around the door.  He could still see the area just around himself, dimly lit as though the lights had merely been turned off normally.  He couldn’t see the other two, but the next thing he knew he felt them, each pressing fingers to one of his temples. An icy pain stabbed through his head and he pitched forward, crashing onto the floor.  The last thing he registered was Deceit’s voice

“Don’t worry, Anxiety, _this won’t hurt a bit.”_

* * *

 

Patton was worried.  He didn’t have the _best_ sense of time, especially not down here where nothing really ever changed, but going off what little light made it under the door at the top of the stairs and his own sense of how deeply into his bones the nighttime chill had penetrated, it had to be almost morning, and Virgil hadn’t come.  He… he’d said he would _always_ come, so why…?  No, it was okay, there was still time.  There was still time. There was still--

He barely held back tears at the sound of someone moving around in the kitchen.  Virgil hadn’t come, and it was morning now, and he had to face the rest of the day until dinner alone, without even the memory of warmth and care to keep him going.  Something must have held him up, he wouldn’t _forget him._  One of the others up really late, early, whatever, making it so he couldn’t get past without being seen.  It was okay, he would see him later. It was okay.

No one came down to mess with him all day, and they hadn’t done much to him yesterday either.  It was… nice to have a break… although he couldn’t help waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which it did, when the door finally opened and it was _Deceit_ who came down and delivered food to him.  He froze and went silent, as he did any time Deceit or Malice was in the room, studiously avoiding eye contact.  Maybe if he didn’t draw attention to himself he would be left alone. It never worked, but he could always hope.

“Surprised to see me?”

His eyes flickered up for a fraction of a second, the only sign he was listening.

“I’m afraid Anxiety is… a bit preoccupied at the moment, so you get me instead.  Sorry.” He looked smug, obviously knowing how much he wasn’t wanted.

Patton wanted to curl up and hide, to get his arms over his face now now _now,_ but that would be moving and moving was dangerous and he couldn’t move.  He had to stay still, then maybe Deceit would go away and stop _looking_ at him, and Patton didn’t even know what he wanted, if he knew he would give it to him (within reason, of course, said the part of him that still remembered his function), but he didn’t know and he couldn’t ask because he had to be quiet and Deceit was coming closer and he was shaking but he couldn’t move, everything would be okay if he could just stay still and quiet and uninteresting, _please_ would it actually work for once…

“Nothing?  Fine. I’m coming back in half an hour, so you’d better eat this.”  Deceit nudged the food toward him with his foot and left.

The door closed, and Patton could breathe again.  He slumped against the wall, muscles aching from being tensed so long.  It was okay, he was okay.

Food.  That was important.  He looked at it: packaged snack-type things, because why would Deceit care enough to actually make something?  He’d clearly just grabbed a few things from a drawer. He started to unwrap a pack of peanut butter crackers and flinched at the crinkling of the wrapper.  Even though he knew he was allowed to have this- supposed to, even- he was afraid to make so much noise. He wanted the quiet safe things Virgil brought. He wanted _Virgil._  Deceit returned, as promised, and found him turned to face the wall and crying, having barely eaten a thing.

“I take it you don’t want this?  Suit yourself, but you’re going to regret it by tomorrow.”  Patton wished he could stop him, tell him that no actually he _did_ want it please just leave it there he wanted it, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak up.  Deceit took everything and went back upstairs.

* * *

 

Day three.  Virgil still hadn’t come, _wasn’t_ coming.  Malice had been _really_ mad about something yesterday.  Patton didn’t know what, he never knew what, he just tried to survive it.  The best he could really say for himself at the moment was that he had survived.  Complete agony had been numbed over the course of the night into a dull, throbbing pain over his entire body, which was… marginally better?  He was dizzy from a combination of the pain, lack of sleep, and the fact he’d eaten almost nothing in the past four days, so he mostly stayed where he was, lying on the floor.

He drifted, not quite conscious.  Eventually the door opened. He tried to decide if it was worth it to sit up.  No, not really, not unless it was Virgil, and it wasn’t, so maybe if he just kept his eyes shut they would think he was asleep and leave him alone to fade from existence in peace.

It didn’t work.  Deceit nudged him, and he flinched away so hard he cracked his head on the wall, which sort of ruined his illusion of being asleep.  He found himself upright by pure adrenaline.

“You’re eating this time,” Deceit informed him.  “Unbelievable as it may sound, we do want you alive.”

Patton wanted it, obviously he did, but the bit of him that still remembered how to be Morality had other ideas and took control for a tiny defiant shake of his head.  The rest of him realized what was happening just in time to panic and ball himself up as best he could, eyes wide and fixed on the floor.

Deceit was genuinely thrown off.   _“No?_  Wha- _why not?”_

Because it was clear by now no one was coming to save him, so he might as well just discorporate and save himself some pain.  Because the _one_ little spark of light and hope he’d had was gone.  “I- I- I’m n-not eating f-for _you,”_ he got out, shocked at his own sudden bravery.

Realization dawned and Deceit sighed, rolling his eyes.  “You’re threatening yourself to make us send Anxiety down here again.”

Patton did not deny the statement.

Deceit leaned back and yelled up the stairs, “Mal, he’s being stubborn!”  He turned back to Patton, who now had his eyes shut, shaking with fear. “I think you’ll find he’s much _better_ at threatening you than you are.”

As it turned out, though, Patton _was_ being stubborn, and he was better at _that_ than either of them.  He wouldn’t give in to persuasion, threats of violence or _actual_ violence.  Half an hour later found him curled on the floor again, this time because he didn’t have the strength to push himself up, which wasn’t actually helped by the fact that Malice kept kicking him while telling him to get up.  He was sobbing into his arms, too dehydrated to actually cry, but he wasn’t giving in.

“Look,” Deceit finally said, pulling Mal back before he could do too much lasting damage.  “If we let you see him for a minute, will you cooperate after that?”

A small nod, unwilling to move his arms and expose his face just in case Malice wasn’t really done with him.

“Fine.”

The two of them left the room, and Patton, in a ball on the floor as he was, missed the evil knowing look they gave each other on their way out.

Virgil had no idea how long he’d been in Deceit’s room, assaulted by an endless string of nightmarish hallucinations.  Physically, if he managed to briefly have some idea of what was real, it seemed that no time had passed at all. Mentally, it might have been years for all he knew.  The room had no exit, it was dark and endless, he was dying a thousand times in a thousand different ways, each somehow worse than the last. Trapped in a burning building, drowning in the middle of a freezing ocean, and such a multitude of violent murders that he knew Malice had to be steering the illusions, when he knew anything at all.

He was never allowed more than a few seconds to recover from whatever horrible death he’d just gone through before they threw him into another.  To call it exhausting would be an understatement. Everything started blending together. He was covered in blood that didn’t go away when everything reset.  Deceit’s creepy villain laugh echoed in his head, and it was somehow effective despite the fact that Virgil had caught him practicing it in the mirror more than once, which _had_ to be a bad sign for his mental state.  He didn’t think he could take much more without his mind shutting down entirely in an attempt to protect itself.  He had a hole ripped in his chest yet again, was desperately trying to stop the bleeding as his vision darkened, and then he was on the floor, physically unharmed.

He waited, braced, but nothing happened.  It… seemed to have stopped. If they weren’t done, they were at least giving him a break.  Afraid to move in case it set off another hallucination, he merely pulled his knees up to his chest, the side of his face pressed into the carpet just to confirm its existence.  The room was a bit warm for his taste, but he was shivering. His heart was racing and wouldn’t slow down, and with his mind in pieces as it was he couldn’t remember how to make that happen.

“Fuck,” he tried to say.  It came out as a whisper. His voice was _shot,_ and the attempt at speaking was painful.  They must have been at this for a while, then.  Lots of screaming.

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes someone was kneeling in front of him.  “Anxiety… Anx, are you still in there? Shoot, did we overdo it?”

“Dee.”  He didn’t have the spare energy to sound angry, though he certainly would later.

“Oh, good, you worried me for a second there.”  A cool hand on the side of Virgil’s face. He pulled away automatically, but stilled as the darkness melted from his vision at Deceit’s touch.  The room was just a room again.

He sat up, unable to resist the urge to check himself over.  Nothing wrong, thank god. “How long… was that?”

Deceit shrugged.  “Few days.”

“A few- what the actual _fuck?!”_

“Mal wanted--”

“Because you care _so much_ about what other people want.”

“Yes, when those people have a knife on hand and well-documented violent tendencies!  You wouldn’t have argued either!”

“Whatever, I’m fully aware you don’t actually care about me, no need to make excuses.  So, what, he finally decide he’d put me through enough to balance out the absolutely nothing I actually did to him?”

“Well…”  Deceit shifted awkwardly.  “He didn’t really… _want_ to stop so much as… uh, you should just go talk to him.  He’s in the hall.”

Virgil squinted suspiciously.  “O…kay?”

Malice was waiting outside the door for him.  “Took you long enough to wake up.”

“Took _you_ long enough to _stop making me think I was dying.”_  Virgil wished his voice would come back.  It was hard to be taken seriously when he had to stage-whisper everything he said.

“It was for your own good, don’t be a baby.  We had to push all that bullshit you picked up from Morality out of your mind somehow.”

Virgil glared at him.  “Can I go back to my own room now?”

“Hmm, not quite yet.  See, we had to stop a little earlier than I would have liked, and we need to make sure you’re back to normal.”  He couldn’t hide a smirk. “Call it a test if you want. All you have to do to pass it is do what I tell you. If we really burned all that sentimental shit out of you, it should be a piece of cake.  If not… I guess you’ll have to “burn” a little _longer.”_

“What are you talking about?”  Virgil suspected he knew, but he had to hope he was wrong.

“Don’t ask, just come with me.”  He put a hand on Virgil’s shoulder to guide him in front of himself, and pressed something cold into his hand.  He didn’t want to look at what he was now holding, but he was pretty sure he knew what it was. Malice pushed him forward and he stumbled.  “That’s it, no questions, you’re doing great. Just come on downstairs.”

Opening the basement door and stepping down into darkness sent Virgil into a brief but dizzying whirl of memories of Deceit’s room.  Malice kept a hand on his shoulder so he didn’t fall, whispering directions that his body followed without input from his mind. When he managed to reel himself in again, he was at the bottom of the stairs.  Malice turned the light on. Virgil’s attention snapped immediately to Patton on the floor, not even moving to try and protect himself when they came in, his eyes unfocused, hopeless. He tried to go to him automatically, because even his most basic level of mental operation had helping Patton as its top priority, but the hand on his shoulder tightened and stopped him.

“Morality,” Malice called.  “Get up. We need you.”

Patton didn’t move.  Malice sighed, turning to Deceit, who had come down the stairs behind them without Virgil noticing.  “Dee, make sure he doesn’t wander off or do anything stupid.”

“If you say so.”  Deceit stood next to Virgil, one hand on his arm, still uncertain as to what exactly he was supposed to do.

Malice went and stood in front of Patton.  “I _said_ get _up.”_  He held his arm out and flicked his wrist like he was using a yo-yo.  Patton was yanked off the ground, slamming his back into the wall with a sharp cry.  His breath was coming faster, but he held out on looking at any of them until Malice backhanded him in the face.  Then he looked up. His eyes met Virgil’s with a silent plea. Virgil tried to send back a heartfelt apology. He wasn’t strong enough to take the others in a fight, there was nothing he could do, he was _weak_ and _useless_ and a fucking _coward_ who never even _tried._

Malice looked back and waved him over.  Deceit gave him a light shove in the right direction.  His legs took that momentum and carried him across the room.  Virgil himself had nothing to do with any of it. Maybe if he thought of it that way, he wouldn’t feel so horrible.  Maybe.

Now he was in front of Patton, and Malice backed off to give him space, and Virgil lifted his hand and saw what he already knew, that he was holding one of those wicked-looking daggers Mal was always conjuring.

“Well?  Go on,” Malice told him.  “You don’t want to fail the test, do you?”

Virgil hesitated.  He couldn’t think, he had to _think._  If he didn’t do this he went back to the nightmares, and if _that_ happened he was completely incapacitated, he couldn’t do _anything._  Was it better to hurt Patton now so he could help him later?  He swallowed and took a step forward.

“What… what exactly do you want me to do?” he whispered over his shoulder as loudly as he could, stalling for time.

“Oh, I don’t know.  See if there’s anything I haven’t gotten to yet.”

Virgil nodded.  He didn’t want to look at Patton as he moved closer still, didn’t want to see the hurt on his face when his only friend in this place betrayed him.  But… if he was actually planning to hurt him, maybe he deserved that. He looked up, meeting Patton’s eyes, and realized he was saying something under his breath, over and over, trying to mask his fear and pain with a small reassuring smile as he looked at Virgil: _it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay I know you don’t mean it it’s okay._  Virgil was glad the other two were behind him as his eyes filled with tears.  He couldn’t do this.

“I’m _waiting,_ Anxiety…”

Virgil’s hands were shaking.  He forced them steady and brought the dagger up, placing the tip on a relatively uninjured area at the base of Patton’s neck.  (It was nearly impossible at this point to find any bit of him that didn’t have at least one or two bruises.) Patton tried not to shudder at the prick of cold metal on his skin, did his best not to react at all, but Virgil could feel him trembling.

“Good,” Malice encouraged him from behind with an evil smile, “now all you have to do is get started.”

Right.  All he had to do now was… actually bring himself to hurt Patton in any capacity.  Real easy. The room was silent, tense and waiting. He pressed the knife into Patton’s skin and saw him shut his eyes, bracing, and wished he could do the same himself.  It would probably get easier after he drew blood for the first time, right? That seemed to make sense. He just needed to- he had to actually _do that._  He took a deep breath and moved his hand, one quick motion before he could change his mind, slicing along the collarbone.  Despite his best efforts at staying silent, Patton whimpered- after his months of abuse, he was basically _made_ of pre-existing injuries, and everything new that happened hurt exponentially more.  It was the only sound in the room, and to Virgil it was like a gunshot.

Malice was slow-clapping somewhere behind him.  He looked down at his hands, at the blood on the dagger and seeping from the cut.  He looked at Patton, who was still trying to comfort _him_ with his eyes, as if he fucking deserved it in the slightest.  Everything about this was so _wrong._

“Well done, only took you ten entire minutes to make your first cut,” Malice drawled.  “Now, the next step--”

Virgil’s eyes narrowed.  “No.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Good, you should be.   _No,”_ Virgil growled.  “I’m n _ot_ _doin_ ** _g this.”_**  His voice was still gone, but he was using one now that came from somewhere other than his own vocal chords.  He didn’t know what he was doing, or how, and he didn’t care.

“Now, Anxiety, surely you don’t really mean--”

**_“I said what I fucking meant.”_ **

Something inside him had snapped.  He felt powerful and angry, mostly angry.  How _dare_ they, both of them, what kind of _fucking audacity_ did they have to ever so much as _touch_ Patton?  He stuck the dagger through one of his belt loops and moved so that he was blocking Malice’s line of sight, and whatever he was doing to hold Patton to the wall dissolved.  Patton fell, and Virgil caught him around the waist before he could stumble. He reached for Patton’s wrists, and the cuffs glowed dark purple for a second before opening and clattering to the ground.  He kicked away the chain holding his ankle even more easily. Patton just stared at him in shock.

“Anxiety, what the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?!”  Malice had a knife of his own now, because that was his solution to _most_ problems, and he was coming towards them.  Deceit was sidling in the same general direction with no actual intention of doing anything, just wanting to look like he was helping so Malice wouldn’t be mad at him later.  Virgil lifted the arm that wasn’t stabilizing Patton and flicked his wrist to the side, knocking both of them into the opposite wall and unconscious. He turned back to Patton, feeling a bit dizzy with his newfound power.

**_“Come on, you’re getting out of here.”_ **

He grabbed his hand and ran with him up the stairs and to the front door.  Patton still couldn’t quite process what was happening. “I- you- what?” he said almost in a whisper.  He was holding onto the front of Virgil’s jacket, unsteady on his feet after so long of almost never even standing.

**_“I’m getting you out, you’re going home.  Really.”_ **  Virgil started to open the door and paused.   **_“It’s probably cold out, here.”_ **  He took his hoodie off and draped it carefully over Patton’s shoulders.  The black and grey over his blue shirt brought to mind a sky covered by dark clouds.

“But- but what about, aren’t you coming with me?  Won’t you get cold outside now?”

Virgil suppressed a wince.  That wasn’t _exactly_ the plan he had in mind.  His rush of power was already fading, but he could still buy Patton time to get away.   **_“I… I’ll be fi_ ** _ne.  I can make a new one right now, watch.”_  He snapped his fingers and was wearing another hoodie, this one plain black because he really did not have time for detail, he just needed Patton to stop worrying about him and _leave._  Virgil couldn’t very well sacrifice himself to let him escape if he was _still there._   _“I’m gonna catch up with you later, okay?”_  He heard movement downstairs.   _“Shit.  You have to go, they’re waking up, I’m gonna deal with them don’t worry, just go, Patton, please?”_

“But you’re still _coming,_ right?  You’re gonna come live with me and my friends and everything will be good.  Right?”

“We can live forever if you’ve got the time,” Virgil muttered mostly to himself, which was good, because Patton had no idea what that was supposed to mean.  He nudged him towards the open door. _“Please_ hurry.”

Patton hesitated in the doorway a few seconds longer, giving him a pleading look, but then Malice was coming up the stairs and Virgil put a hand on Patton’s chest and shoved him outside, hissing _“Run!”_ in his regular, currently nonexistent voice and locking the door behind him.  Patton stumbled the first few steps away from the house, staring at the door, then turned away with a choked sob and started running as best he could in the direction he thought his house was, clutching Virgil’s jacket around himself.

* * *

 

Patton ran until he couldn’t run anymore and fell on his hands and knees in the grass, gasping.  The sun was close to setting, and he wasn’t sure where he was. But- he was outside, he wasn’t in that house anymore, that was something.  He sat on the ground for a few minutes to catch his breath before forcing himself up again. He couldn’t stop here no matter how tired he was, they might come after him, he needed to move.

Things around him seemed to be getting more colorful, and the sky was turning blue, rather than the dark grey it’d been back there despite a lack of clouds.  At least he was going in the right general direction. He kept walking.

The sun was almost gone when he came over a hill and saw the lights of his house.   _Home._  He was almost there.

Roman was on the couch, where he basically lived as of late, papers scattered around him.  He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the one he was looking at. He hadn’t slept in a while- he hardly ever did, anymore, how could he sleep when he could be trying to find Patton?  How could he let himself take a break when his friend might be suffering at Malice’s hands that very minute? If he wasn’t actively out searching for wherever the dark sides had him, he was planning his _next_ try that would definitely go better than the failure he’d just returned from, as he was doing now.  Logan had given up on convincing him to take care of himself a long time ago, only putting his foot down when the sleep deprivation got bad enough to make him a danger to himself.

The page of suggestions from Logan on geometrically ideal ways to cover ground blurred in front of him.  Maybe… maybe he needed a break. Just a few minutes. He wasn’t accomplishing anything like this, so it wasn’t any _more_ a waste of time to stop for a bit, maybe get up and get some more coffee.

Just as he was thinking of standing up, there was a knock at the door and he was across the room before he could think, mind overwhelmed with hope as he threw the door open, and for once, for _once in his life_ the thing he was hoping for _actually happened._  Patton was there in front of him, holding the door frame for support like he might collapse any second and clutching an unfamiliar black hoodie around his shoulders.  He was exhausted, battered, and far too thin, his shirt torn and bloodied, but he was _there._  Roman rushed forward and hugged him, not too hard, spinning him around into the living room and trying not to cry.

“Oh my god, _Patton!_  I’m so sorry, I should have- I tried- I couldn’t find you, I’m sorry, I-I _tried…”_

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Patton murmured into his shoulder, leaning most of his weight on him.  “I’m…” He wasn’t exactly _okay,_ but- “I’m home now.”  At that moment, his legs gave out and Roman caught him, setting him on the couch and waving away all the notes they didn’t need anymore.

“Logan!   _Logan,_ get in here!”

“What is it?  I’m a bit- oh.   _Oh.”_  He was speechless for a good twenty seconds, and Roman wondered if he was imagining him tearing up.  Then he gave himself a hard shake and snapped out of it. “Okay. Okay- Roman, get him a glass of water, he appears to be dehydrated.  And something to eat if he can handle it, and anything else you deem necessary. I will… see what I can do here.”

“Right.”  Roman started to get up, but Patton was clinging to his sleeve with a weak grip Roman couldn’t bring himself to pull out of.

“Don’t leave,” he begged, “d-don’t- I-”

Roman brushed his hair back from his eyes, making soothing noises.  “I’m not going far, you can watch me, I’m just going to the kitchen to get you some water, is that okay?”

“...Yeah.”  Patton released him, put his arms through the sleeves of the still unexplained hoodie and hugged himself until Roman came back.  He drank most of the water he brought in one go, and Logan reminded him to slow down and not make himself sick. Roman asked if he wanted something to eat, and he hesitantly responded that he very much did.  The only outcome of answering that question honestly in his recent memory had been Malice mocking him for admitting how hungry he was, but these were his friends, not _him,_ they wouldn’t be mean like that, they just wanted to know how to help him.

Logan sat on the couch next to him, putting a box of medical supplies on the table.  “Can you take off your shirt for me?”

He tried, but ended up shaking his head no.  His arms just wouldn’t cooperate, and he certainly didn’t have the energy to snap it away.

“Will you be upset if I ruin it?”

“It’s already ruined.”

Fair enough.  Logan took a pair of scissors and cut down the front of the shirt so Patton could get it off without having to move so much.  Roman came back with a refilled glass and very nearly dropped it at the sight of just how dark and _everywhere_ his bruises were, how a lattice of overlapping cuts of different sizes covered his arms and chest.  Some were actively bleeding, reopened in his many falls on the way here. Logan sucked in a breath. Patton ducked his head, a little uncomfortable with both of them staring at him.

“It seems I have a lot of work to do,” Logan said quietly, breaking the silence.

Roman set the glass down on the table and hurried back into the kitchen to find something to _fucking feed him._  There wasn’t much in the kitchen Patton would like at the moment, because Logan only made boring healthy stuff and Roman had been living on energy bars so as to waste as little time as possible on his stupid “needs” or whatever.  And yes, he’d probably accept whatever was put in front of him, but Roman wanted to make him _happy,_ damn it.  Things he just conjured up were never actually filling, so that wasn’t an option, but he found some macaroni and cheese in the fridge and heated it up with a wave of his hand.  That would suffice.

Patton tried not to complain while Logan cleaned his wounds with something that _really_ stung.  He’d said to tell him if it hurt, but… part of Patton’s mind, the part that wasn’t yet convinced he was really home and safe, said that saying anything would make him vulnerable, the only way to deal with something that hurt was to hold his breath and avoid reacting until it stopped.  He tried to tell it this was different, this was _Logan_ and he didn’t _want_ to hurt him and he’d stop and do it a gentler way if Patton spoke up, but it wouldn’t listen, so he just put on a smile and waited for him to finish.  He wasn’t _really_ hiding his feelings, he _was_ happy that Logan was doing this for him.

He was halfway done when Roman returned with mac & cheese, handed it to him and sat down at his side.  Patton tried to remember what Logan said earlier, about not going too fast and making himself sick, but it didn’t work.

“Patton…” He looked up.  Roman was giving him a sad, worried look.  “How… how long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“Um… four…”

“Hours?” Logan asked, not very hopefully.

Patton looked down.  “...Days.”

He heard a choked sound of horror and outrage from Roman, and felt his arm around him a second later, somewhat awkwardly trying to hug him without getting in Logan’s way.  Logan hadn’t stopped his work, but his hands were a little less steady, and he was giving Patton’s arm a completely unearned glare as he finished cleaning him up and started wrapping it in bandages.

Eventually, he was all taken care of- cleaned up, bandaged up, and wearing a soft blue button-down pajama shirt Roman had conjured for the sake of his being able to get it on.  He pulled the hoodie around his shoulders again and leaned into Roman’s side, blinking heavily. It was getting late, but he wasn’t going to fall asleep, he had to wait for Virgil.  He said so out loud when Logan tried to tell him he needed to sleep, and then they wanted to know who the heck that was, and he slowly explained how exactly he’d ended up back home.

“Wait, Anxiety?  You _made friends_ with _him?”_  They’d never really met, but Roman knew Anxiety was his counterpart and the one responsible for never letting him do anything he wanted to just because it “might be dangerous” or whatever.  He didn’t exactly seem _friendly._

“He’s _nice,”_ Patton insisted, slightly offended on Virgil’s behalf.  “And he- he kept me alive back there, he got me _out_ of there, so don’t be rude.”

His dad voice wasn’t quite as effective when he used it on someone he was so completely cuddled up to, his face pressed into Roman’s neck and their legs tangled together.  He was pretty sure he was at least safe from making himself sick with too much touch all at once, so he was getting all he possibly could. Roman’s arms were around him, and Logan was contributing as much as he felt comfortable with, sitting on Patton’s other side just close enough for his presence to be felt and putting a hand on his arm.

“And… you say he told you he would catch up with you and stayed behind to fight Malice?”

“Yes.  He’s gonna be here soon, I- I know he will.”

“Patton…”  Logan sounded _sad,_ why did he sound so sad?  Nothing was sad here, it was _fine,_ Virgil was coming and everything would be fine and they would all be a family together.  “Patton, you may have to consider the possibility that he… isn’t coming after all.”

Patton gripped Roman’s shirt.  “No…”

Roman held him tighter.  “I’m sorry, Patton, but… if he’s not here by now, we have to assume…”

“I don’t h-have to assume _anything!”_  He burst into tears.  It wasn’t just Virgil, it was _everything,_ all the shit that had happened and the fact that he was home now and the fact that being home hadn’t magically made everything okay and it might never _be_ okay again, not the same way it was before.  Roman petted his hair and rocked him, making shushing noises and whispering nonsense, letting him cry it out.  He exchanged a look with Logan over Patton’s head, commiserating over the fact that they both felt absolutely murderous towards the ones who had hurt him.

By the time Patton finally wore himself out and slowed to just the occasional little sob, it was officially too late to be awake, but here he was.  And here Roman was, still comforting him even though it had been at least half an hour and not complaining about how damp his shirt was, and Logan had draped some blankets over the both of them and turned off the lights, settling in at the other end of the couch because he thought he’d do more harm than good trying to calm him down right now.  He was fast asleep at this point.

Patton wasn’t giving up hope, he _wasn’t,_ but he was so tired, even more so after that, he couldn’t keep his eyes open.  And there were the blankets over him, and Roman holding him so securely, and Logan close by, and they were all right here so they would wake up if someone was at the door, right?   _When_ someone was.  He shifted slightly to get more comfortable, nuzzled into Roman’s neck, and finally gave in to sleep.

* * *

 

Virgil shut the door behind Patton, pulled the dagger out of the belt loop he’d stuck it into and turned to face Malice.  There was no banter this time, they were both too deadly serious for that. Deceit slipped past them quietly, not about to be anywhere near involved in this.

“Out of my way.”

“No.”

Virgil ducked just in time as Malice swung at him, and came back up with an easily-dodged slash in his general vague direction.  He was trying to stall for time, not commit murder- he just needed to provide a distraction until it was safe to assume Patton was long gone.  After that, it didn’t matter what happened.

They were evenly matched for a minute or two.  Unfortunately, only one of them had, technically speaking, slept in the last several days.  Malice was quickly gaining the upper hand. Virgil’s new jacket was already ruined, slashed in multiple places.  He was backed against the door, breathing hard. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid a swing at his left arm that made him hiss in pain and drop his knife as blood started soaking the surrounding part of his sleeve.  That was it, he was through. He took a step back and hit the door.

Malice shifted his grip on his dagger.  Virgil closed his eyes, bracing, but they flew open again when Malice stabbed him, twisting the knife as he yanked it out to tear him open even more.  He looked down, trying with little effect to cover the wound with his hands, and fell to his knees. A few seconds later he fell the rest of the way, wide eyes unseeing.  His body slowly dissolved into the air. Malice took a step back, looking pleased with himself.

Wait.  No. Back up.  Virgil took a step back and _expected_ to hit the door, but instead fell through it, because it wasn’t actually there even though it sure looked like it was.  Deceit steadied him before he could fall, closed the _real_ door quietly and peeked through the window at the illusion he’d put in Virgil’s place.

“Oh no,” he said mildly.  “Mal stabbed you and you discorporated.”

Virgil stared at him.

“I’d find somewhere else to be for however long it usually takes you to re-form.”

He nodded slowly.  Uncertain of where his overall feelings fell on the scale of “thanks for saving my life” to “fuck you for causing all of this to begin with,” he just shot Dee a peace sign and ducked into the nearby patch of woods where he’d be less likely to be seen.  He’d hide out for a few hours until it got dark, and then… go be somewhere else.

* * *

 

Logan jolted awake around three in the morning at the sound of quiet knocking.  He seemed to be the only one it had woken, probably because he was the only one not catching up on days and weeks of lost sleep.  As such, he tried not to disturb the others when he got up to investigate.

The man at the door had a wary expression and several open knife wounds, hand pressed over one on his currently useless left arm.  His eyes flickered between Logan and the darkened room behind him. “Is this- are you- he made it, right, he’s safe?” he asked a bit desperately.

“You must be the Virgil we’ve been hearing so much about.”

He stepped back and Virgil followed him inside, nearly going limp with relief when he made out the shape of Patton, peacefully asleep in someone’s arms- Roman?  That had to be Roman, right? “Yep. And I take it you’re Logan, ditto,” he whispered. “Uh… I’ll be honest, I didn’t really think through what I was gonna do _after_ I got here.  Didn’t really… expect to get here at all.”  He shifted in place awkwardly.

“Well, let’s start with your arm, there.”  Logan led him to his own room and sat him on the bed.  “Jacket off.”

Virgil struggled a bit to free himself from his rather shredded hoodie, stuck to him as it was.  He was _not_ about to take his whole shirt off in front of someone he barely knew, but he rolled up his sleeve so Logan could get to the injury.  “…Thanks.”

Logan made a face that didn’t bode well.  That cut was pretty deep. “It looks like stitches might be a good idea here.”

Virgil grimaced, but nodded.  He was not a fan of getting stitches, but letting Logan do it was probably a better idea than brushing him off and just wrapping it up and hoping it healed right.  He seemed to know what he was talking about. That reassuring confidence even let him convince Virgil to at least pull his shirt up, if he wouldn’t take it off, to make sure he didn’t have any _other_ serious wounds.  Which he did.

It took a while to get him patched up.  He had to admit it was nice having someone else take care of him, rather than the alternative of trying to do his own stitches and secure the bandages one-handed.  On the other hand, he was growing restless the longer it took, and it was getting hard to sit still when he could be out in the living room. Logan seemed to notice his discomfort and eventually started talking again to distract him.

“You know, Patton spoke very highly of you earlier.”

That just made him _more_ uncomfortable.  He shifted, trying not to mess up what Logan was doing.  “Yeah, well, he’s… nice like that. I’m not actually all that great.”  He didn’t want anybody having high expectations of him, they’d just end up disappointed when they realized what he was actually like.

Logan raised an eyebrow without looking up.  “The evidence suggests otherwise. According to him, not only did you help him escape, you were also the only reason he survived this long in the first place.  ...And you _can_ talk normally if you want, you’re not going to wake anyone up from all the way in here.”

“Lost my voice earlier,” Virgil explained, glad to have something to respond to that didn’t require acknowledging good things being said about himself.

Logan waited a second for further elaboration, but it didn’t come.  He tied off the last bandage and stood. “In that case, do you want some tea to help with that?”

Virgil shrugged and nodded.  He hated asking for things at other people’s houses, but Logan was _offering,_ so honestly, his brain could shut the hell up and let him accept.  “I mean, if you want. If you don’t mind or whatever.”

“Virgil, you brought him home.  There are _very_ few things I would mind doing for you right now.”

Virgil snapped himself into a clean shirt and followed him into the kitchen, wishing he would stop saying things like that.  He looked around while Logan made the tea, which he apparently fixed for Roman whenever the latter blew his voice out with too much singing.  Their house was cozy, with little touches of decoration everywhere from all three of them. The dark sides’ house was a little more… organically decorated… by which he meant a disaster mess at all times because no one cared enough to clean up, although he at least tried not to leave his stuff lying around outside his room in case someone fucked with it.  Logan poured tea for both of them, which made him feel a little less weird drinking it, but then he had to go and start _talking_ again.

“What do you plan to do now?”

Virgil hesitated.  “I’m… not sure. I can’t really go back for a few days, ‘cause Malice thinks I discorporated and I wanna keep it that way, but you don’t- I’m not gonna ask you to let me stay _here_ that long, I can just… I’ll figure something out.”

“Actually, I… was going to ask you if you _would_ consider staying a while,” Logan admitted.  “I believe having you here would help Patton’s recovery.  More to the point, I’m not sure you’ll be able to leave without upsetting him greatly for some time.  He was, uh, very concerned about you earlier.” Understatement.

“I… okay.  If you think it will help him.”

Logan nodded with a small smile and sipped his tea, evidently considering the matter settled.

* * *

 

Virgil fell asleep in an armchair while claiming he wasn’t tired- he didn’t want to _sleep,_ he wanted to watch over Patton and assure himself all of this was still real and he was okay- and woke up with the morning sun hitting him in the face, covered by one of Logan’s spare blankets.  He could hear Logan himself moving around in another room, but Patton and Roman were both still asleep on the couch. He got up quietly and sat next to them. Patton still had his hoodie on, he realized with a sudden rush of affection, and from the way his hand was positioned, it looked like he’d been holding the edge of it when he fell asleep.  Roman had his arms around him in a protective way Virgil strongly related to, and shifted in his sleep to hold him even closer. He wasn’t sure why he needed to blink so much all of a sudden, but he was glad Patton had such good friends to take care of him.

He jumped when Logan tapped him on the shoulder and turned around, a little embarrassed.

“I didn’t intend to startle you.  I wanted to ask if you would mind helping me make breakfast, since I’ve heard such good things about your cooking.”

“It’s not _that_ good.”  His skills were passable at best, in his opinion, although he could see how Patton might have been impressed by _any_ kind of cooking after months of only having whatever Deceit found to throw his way.  Still, if he was going to be staying here, he should make himself useful- he was another person to have to feed, so it was only fair.  “But I’ll come out and help as long as you don’t expect too much.”

Once they were in the kitchen, he tried actually talking, only to drop back down when he found out his voice was still awful.  “So what are we- _fuck,_ I sound like the ghost of a garbage disposal.  Guess we’re still whispering.”

“Actually, whispering is worse for your vocal chords right now than trying to talk normally,” Logan informed him, “so you won’t be doing either.”  He summoned up a whiteboard and marker so fast he must have already had them in his room. “If you need to communicate, use this.”

Virgil took them with a baffled expression.  If this was what it was like to have people care about his well-being, maybe he’d pass on that, actually.   _I think I’d rather just wreck my voice than have to write everything,_ he scrawled slowly and right-handed.  He’d only woken up half an hour ago and he was already tempted to go back to his dominant hand.  Serious injury? What serious injury?

“Well, you should recover it fully by tomorrow, _if_ you take proper care of it,” Logan said pointedly.  “Promise not to talk unless you absolutely have to and I’ll make you more tea.”

Virgil sighed and nodded.   _What are we making?_

“Everything.”

Virgil was much less helpful than he wanted to be, given his current limitations, but he mixed up the batter for chocolate chip pancakes while Logan made… pretty much everything, yeah, more things than Virgil thought it was necessary, reasonable, or even _possible_ to have for breakfast at the same time, even with four of them there.  He caught a glimpse of the almost frantic look on his face as he turned around and softened, understanding.  He wrote for a while, then tapped Logan on the shoulder to get him to look.

_I know you want to make it better, but you can’t do that all in one morning, you know?  It’s gonna take time. Maybe we should put some of this away for later and not overwhelm the guy his first day back home._

Logan stared at the board for a moment, surprised, then swallowed and nodded.  “…Yes, you’re right. I was…” He trailed off, even more upset with himself for not being able to find the words he wanted.

Virgil put the board in front of his face to break the distant stare he was giving the wall.   _I get it, don’t worry._

Mostly regaining his composure, Logan turned back to the mess he needed to sort out.  “I think just… bacon and pancakes will be sufficient, does that seem adequate to you?”

Virgil gave him a nod and a thumbs up, and started helping to put everything else back in the fridge.

Roman opened his eyes slowly and felt indescribable relief at finding Patton still in his arms, not just a dream this time, not a fantasy he’d let himself believe was real.  Despite the complaints of his stiff legs, he had no desire to get up. He ran his fingers through Patton’s hair and felt him sigh in his sleep, burrowing into Roman’s chest and setting off another wave of emotion.  He wasn’t going to fail him again, he swore to himself. Never again.

It took him a few minutes to be aware of things other than Patton.  Eventually he heard Logan in the kitchen, talking to someone, which was odd because no one else lived here, but- wait.  He twisted around as far as he could and saw Logan and someone else, dressed in all black with makeup under his eyes. Though he’d never seen him before, he recognized the other “side” of his own coin immediately.  He forced down his automatic negative reaction- given everything Patton had said about him, he couldn’t be all that bad. It was just that he had difficulty trusting _any_ dark side, even one vouched for by his best friend, who could frankly be a little too quick to see the good and _only_ the good in other people.  Especially when… _any_ good had been so absent from his life for so long.

The suspicious part of him receded a little more when he saw that Anxiety- Virgil, apparently- had been helping Logan cook, and they brought breakfast out to the living room once it became clear the two of them on the couch weren’t getting up any time soon.  Roman nodded at them in greeting, since his hands were a bit occupied.

“This is Virgil,” Logan introduced him in a whisper.  “I’ve asked him to stay with us at least until Patton recovers.”

Virgil looked at him sideways, appearing to question what he’d just heard, and Roman secretly agreed.  At least? What, did Logan want him to _move in?_  There had to be some kind of rule against that, right?

He didn’t say anything about it, though.  He nudged Patton gently. “Hey, sleeping beauty… There’s pancakes…”

Patton finally stirred awake, disoriented at first but not too worried- he was warm and comfortable and Roman was here, so nothing could be very wrong.  “Yay,” he said once he processed the words, voice thick with sleep.

“You… do have to sit up to eat them,” Roman reminded him when he didn’t move or even keep his eyes open.  “Alright, come on.”

He swung Patton’s legs over the side of the couch for him, ignoring his halfhearted noise of protest.  Patton leaned on him, face in his shoulder, until Logan handed him his glasses and he reluctantly put them on.  When he finally opened his eyes, he gasped and woke up all at once, throwing himself at Virgil.

“You made it!  I- I knew you would…”

Virgil seemed a bit distressed by this turn of events, struggling to keep Patton from crashing them both into the coffee table and ending up on his back on the floor.  “Don’t just _do_ that,” he rasped despite Logan’s warning look.  He wrapped his arms around Patton and pushed himself to a sitting position to hug him properly.  “You’re gonna hurt yourself.” Logan gave him an even _worse_ look for that, because he was next to him and had clearly seen Virgil hit his injured arm hard on the corner of the table, but he shot a look back- _don’t you dare make him feel bad._

“Sorry, I just, I was- I was _so scared_ when you- when- did he hurt you?”  Patton pulled back and looked at him with a worried frown.  Virgil batted his hands away from trying to examine him, not quite hiding a wince.

“...A little, yeah.  It’s fine, Logan fixed me up.”

“Speaking of which,” Logan interrupted, pulling Virgil away, “I believe it’s past time for a change of bandages.  For both of you, actually, but- Roman, you can take care of his after he eats, right?”

“Of course.”  After all the dangerous adventures he’d been on in his time, Roman was well-versed in wound care.

As soon as the door to his room was shut behind them, Logan was giving Virgil a stern look.  “Yes, I _fixed you up,_ that doesn’t mean you get to _break_ yourself again!”

“I didn’t get knocked into the table on _purpose,”_ he defended.

“No, but you were going to pretend nothing had happened, weren’t you?”  He rolled Virgil’s sleeve up and _tsk_ ed at the blood beginning to soak through the bandage.  He would have to redo the stitches.

“Patton--”

“Can handle occasionally being told he made a mistake, and would in fact prefer it over hurting you and not knowing.”

“Just- not today, okay?  Not when… I just, I’ve hardly ever seen him smile before, I can’t… ruin that today.”

Logan sighed.  “Promise you’ll at least tell _me_ if you’re hurt again.  And stop talking,” he added belatedly.  Virgil mimed zipping his mouth shut and nodded.

Back in the living room, Patton’s rush of joy and adrenaline faded and he realized Virgil had been right, and it had been dumb to tackle someone when his entire torso looked and felt like he’d been run over by an unusually sharp car.  He hunched over on his knees with a gasp when the consequences of his actions hit him. Roman was at his side instantly.

“Hurts,” he got out through tears.

“I know, I know… Try to relax, it’ll fade.”  A comforting hand on the back of his neck- one of the few spots that _didn’t_ hurt.  Roman holding his hand and twisting Patton’s hair in his fingers until he felt he could move again.  He sat up carefully.

“I-I…”

“Shh, lean on me, it’s alright.  That looked exhausting.”

He nodded shakily and complied, gradually returning to normal.

“Excellent.  Now, _you_ have some breakfast to attend to…”  Roman scooped him up like he weighed nothing and set him on the couch with a flourish, making him laugh.  “And I have _you_ to attend to.”

Patton processed that and turned to look at him.  “Not until you eat, you don’t!” he said indistinctly.

“But you--”

“Nope, sit down.”  He tugged at Roman’s arm, knowing he couldn’t refuse him anything right now.  “It won’t hurt me to wait a little and it _will_ hurt me if I know you’re taking care of me and not yourself!”

“Oh, all _right.”_  He sat.  He was always weak to Patton’s puppy-eyes look, but whenever he was at all sick or hurt there was no point even _trying_ to resist.  Even less when Patton leaned into his side and got comfy, making sure he couldn’t move without disturbing him, which was just not playing fair.

Oh.  Oh, this was _really good,_ although that might have been his refusal to make himself any real food for the past several months talking.  He didn’t have much trouble acquiescing to Patton’s demands once he actually started eating.

* * *

 

Roman would have expected Patton to be feeling _better_ today than yesterday, yet he whined considerably more when Roman changed his bandages than he had when Logan put them on in the first place.  He tried not to take it personally- he was being as gentle as he _could,_ okay?

“Almost done, hold still… there.  Here, take this.” He conjured a stronger painkiller than anything they had in the medicine cabinet, since the regular kind clearly hadn’t done its job.  Patton took it gratefully. “I should warn you, it _will_ make you sleepy.”

“I’m already sleepy.”

“Then you should probably just lie down and sleep, because that’s going to knock you right out.”

“Mhm.  Will you stay with me?”

“I was hardly planning to _go_ anywhere,” Roman said, but he knew what Patton meant.  He waved a hand at the couch and expanded it to the size of a bed, so they could both lie down while still leaving room for others to sit.  Roman took the edge since he could more easily climb over the arm-turned-railing of the couch if he wanted to get up, and Patton curled up with his back to him, letting Roman hold him.  Roman pulled the blankets over them both and settled in against him. He didn’t really _want_ to take a nap in the middle of the day, but he _did_ want to make Patton happy, so here he was.

Patton was already starting to feel better, and he was also starting to feel very heavy.  He dozed off for a while, then woke up a little when Logan and Virgil came back in. He tried to reach for them while also not moving much, because that was too much work and so was talking, but Logan was fortunately experienced in sleepy-Patton interpretation.

“He appears to be indicating that it is ‘nap time,’ as he would put it, and that he would like us to join them,” he told Virgil, who made the facial-expression equivalent of a shrug and flopped down on the other side of Patton.  Who was he, Virgil “hide under the covers until the sun goes away” Sanders, to turn down a nap invitation? Logan sat next to him, reaching over to take Patton’s glasses off him and set them on the table. He didn’t want to nap, but he could sit near them all and read or something.

Roman lifted his head.  “Oh, uh- Virgil, do you want what I gave him?  For your… y’know… getting-stabbed-ness?”

Virgil shook his head.  He didn’t want anything that would make him sleepy; that would make it kind of hard to stay alert and do his job, after all.

Speaking of their jobs…

Roman groaned softly.  “Bad news. Thomas is setting up for a video, and we haven’t written any scripts lately, which means he’s going to want _us_ for it.”

“I’ll tell him we’re busy,” Logan sighed, conjuring a bookmark.

He rose up while Thomas was still giving his intro.

“Oh!  Logan!  Uh… that was fast, I haven’t even said what the problem is yet!”

“This isn’t really the best time for a video, Thomas, but go ahead and tell me what’s wrong _this_ time and I’ll do what I can.”

“O… kay, well, I’ve just been feeling really weird and… I guess confused, lately.  Thought I’d check in and see if _you_ guys know what the problem is.”

Logan looked somewhat guilty.  “Ah… um… yes, we haven’t been doing our best work, I’ll admit.  But the situation is being resolved, so there is no need to worry.”

“Well, that’s… good to hear?  I really think it would be a good idea to hear from the others, though, like--”

“Don’t summon them!” Logan interrupted hurriedly.  “They’re- busy.” Was that close enough to accurate?  No, he should tell Thomas the full truth. “They’re taking a nap, and they could both use the rest.”

Thomas looked concerned.   _“Roman_ is taking a nap?  In the middle of the day?  Is he sick or something? …Is that possible?”

“Yes, it is, no, he isn’t, but Patton is… not doing particularly well… and Roman has been staying near him in case he needs anything.”

“Oh, no!  Well, tell him I hope he feels better soon- hold on, I haven’t seen him in… a long time… How _long_ has he not been doing well, Logan, what’s wrong with him?  Is he gonna be okay? Can you at least ask him to come talk to me when he’s awake?”

“Can you stop asking so many questions?” snapped a side Thomas didn’t recall knowing in a hoarse voice, appearing suddenly on the stairs.

“Aah!  Who are you?!   _What is going on?”_

“I’m your anxiety, don’t you recognize me?  You’re getting worried, and it’s making _me_ worry, and I don’t need any more of that than I already have, thanks, so try and calm down.”  His anxiety had an edgy all-black look that might have been intimidating if not for the floofy mess his hair currently was.  He saw Thomas staring and tried to flatten it out, flushing a bit with embarrassment. “Great official first impression,” he muttered to himself.

Now that Thomas thought about it, he did seem familiar.  He’d never appeared for a video before, but he saw him in the corner of his vision when he was in stressful situations or feeling randomly existential, although he didn’t normally sound so… bad.  And he’d never seen him without his hoodie, so this was weird. On the other hand, he was being much nicer than usual. Most of the time he showed up, he only wanted to talk about things Thomas either surely would or already had screwed up.  Or the inevitability of death and the futility of life. You know, casual small-talk stuff.

“I… Sorry?”  Thomas was even more confused now than he had been when he’d decided it was enough of a problem to call his sides about.

“Just… forget about it for now.”

“Yes, we can all explain later, but again, this isn’t a good time,” Logan agreed.  “In the meantime, I will attempt to reorganize your mind. I apologize for falling behind in my work so dramatically.”  Both of them sank out before Thomas could say anything else, and he sighed and turned off the camera. That hadn’t exactly been video material after all, and he _still_ didn’t know what was going on.

* * *

 

Virgil reappeared in his previous spot on the couch, and this time, he was actually able to relax.  He stretched out with the same blanket Logan had given him last night, facing Patton and Roman. Logan rose next to him and immediately got up, heading off to try and sort out Thomas’s thoughts and making Virgil promise to come tell him if he was needed.  Which left him alone with Patton, who was asleep, and Roman, who was _not._

“Virgil?”

“...What?”  He was understandably guarded.  He hadn’t missed the semi-suspicious looks Roman had been giving him when he thought he wasn’t paying attention.  Too bad for him, Virgil was _always_ paying attention.  That was… kind of his _thing._  Anyway, though, he probably didn’t have anything too bad to say if he was willing to do it with Patton sleeping between them, so Virgil figured he could let his guard down a little.

“I, uh… I wanted to tell you…”

He stopped as Patton seemed to be on the edge of waking up, and stroked his hair to keep him relaxed, while Virgil took his hand and laced their fingers together loosely, rubbing his thumb over Patton’s knuckles.  He sighed softly and stayed asleep, and they looked up at each other again. Roman lowered his voice a bit more to be safe.

“I just wanted to say that I… I’m not quite sure I can say I fully trust you right now-” Virgil nodded, he hadn’t expected anything different- “but… I know you helped him, and you seem to be _good_ for him when he’s not throwing himself at you, so I- I’m going to try.  I’m just asking that you… I don’t know, talk to me. Help me out here.” He looked away, having made himself uncharacteristically vulnerable.

“…Oh.”  He saw the mildly panicked look on Roman’s face.  “I mean- I just… wasn’t expecting that. I’ll talk, but if Logan gets pissed about it I’m blaming you.”

Roman exhaled, relieved.  “That’s fine, he’s usually mad at me anyway.  So… tell me about yourself, or something?”

“I, uh…”  One of Virgil’s least favorite questions.  “I’m honestly pretty boring. Don’t usually leave my room a whole lot if I don’t have a good reason to.  The people I live with are assholes, so…”

“Bit of an understatement, don’t you think,” Roman near-growled, looking down at Patton.

“Trust me, if _you_ have the words to properly express it I will not argue with you.  Dee can have his… brief moments of decency… but Malice? You should have killed him when you had the chance.  I mean, _I_ should have, too, but he’s kinda better at that particular brand of fighting than me and, uh… I was losing.  Badly.”

Roman was briefly distracted.  “... _Dee?”_

“Look, when nobody trusts each other enough to share their real name or cares enough to ask in the first place, you make do.  I get ‘Anx’ a lot.”

“Okay, and…” He shook his head, frustrated.  “I _would_ have killed him, but Logan wouldn’t let me.  He, uh, told me not to get the sword out in the first place, but--”

“You should have listened to him.”

“Wait, what?”

“Look, decapitating that son of a bitch would have been _very_ satisfying, but he would’ve been back soon enough, ‘cause we can’t actually die.  And as it was? I can’t tell if I want to high-five you or slap you across the face.  Do you _ever_ consider the consequences of your actions?”  He was still whispering, but managed to get his anger across nonetheless.

Roman’s voice got smaller, a little uncertain.  “…What?”

“From what I’ve heard, what happened is: he got to you, and I’m not gonna fault you for that, he’s _good_ at getting to people.  Then you got up and pulled a whole sword on him, which I’ll admit was probably a reasonable reaction, and the talk lost all semblance of civilization, and he was _pissed._  Malice is an extremely vengeful person, but he couldn’t do anything to _you_ because you had a _sword._  You’re not stupid, Roman, what the _fuck do you think happened_ when he got home?”

It only took a few seconds for Roman’s expression to turn horrified.  “Oh. Oh god.” He reached over for Patton’s free hand, like he could retroactively protect him.  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t… H-how much of this is--?”

“Looking at the big picture, probably not that much.  In the moment? I came in that night and had to pick him up off the floor and make him functional again.  He was too hurt and tired to move from where Malice dropped him when he was done. _He’s_ probably forgiven you already, or never blamed you for it in the first place, because he’s a _good person._  Me, though, I might take a little longer.”

“I’m sorry,” Roman whispered again, hiding his face in Patton’s hair.  “I- I didn’t realize…” He was crying. Virgil relented and rubbed a hand over his face.

“Okay, no, I’m sorry.  It’s not your fault Mal’s a horrible person, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to you that he’d react like that if you don’t know him very well.  I just…” He shook his head. He just wanted _someone_ to be mad at, but Roman didn’t deserve that, not really.  “You’ve been taking such good care of him since he got back, I… shouldn’t yell at you.”

“…Friends?”  Roman reached across Patton, offering his hand.

Virgil half-smiled and shook his hand.  “Yeah.”

“Good,” Patton mumbled, making them both jump.  Shit, how much of that had he heard? “No fighting.  Don’t want my friends to fight.”

Roman smoothed his hair down again and gently kissed the side of his face.  “We’re not fighting, padre. Go back to sleep.”

“Yeah, we’re getting along now,” Virgil agreed.  “Don’t worry.” Patton tugged on his hand, which he took as a request to scoot closer.  He moved until they were almost touching, and Patton let go of his hand to grip his shirt, not that he _had_ much of a grip in this half-asleep state.  Virgil put an arm over him without letting himself think too much about it, and Roman didn’t seem to mind that he was also touching _him_ now, brushing his own similarly-positioned arm.  Patton smiled, surrounded on all sides by two of his favorite people, and drifted off again.

* * *

 

The rest of that day and much of the next passed in a sleepy blur.  Around late afternoon, though, Patton finally woke up enough to want to do something other than nap.

“We should have movie night,” he said, sitting up and poking Logan’s face to get his attention.  “Have you been remembering it without me?”

“Not really, no.”  They hadn’t exactly been in the mood to partake in an event normally organized by Patton when it would only remind them he was gone.

“Well then we’re all past due for one!”  He got up and went to the bottom of the stairs to call up to Roman, who was trying to help Thomas get a _proper_ video idea.  “Ro, come down, we’re doing movie night!”

“So is this, like, a thing for you guys?” Virgil asked.  Thankfully, his voice was back to normal at this point.

Logan nodded.  “Every week. Patton likes to find ways to get Roman and I away from our work,” he said with a fond little smile.  “I’d better find more blankets.”

“Uh…”  He looked at the couch, which had five on it already.  “Don’t we have _enough?”_

“Not for a blanket fort!”  Roman rushed in and started enthusiastically rearranging the furniture.  

Virgil retreated to the kitchen out of fear of a chair-related injury and found Patton making several bags of microwave popcorn for everyone.  They all seemed to have a routine here, and he felt a little awkward just watching. “Anything I can do to help?”

“You can grab that bowl up there for me!”  Patton indicated a large plastic bowl on a high shelf.  “I’d get it myself, but I can’t really… lift my arms that far.”

“Oh.  Sure.”  He got it down and set it on the table, and Patton started dumping the popcorn into it.  Virgil would really just get in the way if he tried to help with that part, so he hovered, waiting, and trailed behind Patton when he took the bowl out to the living room.

Oh, _wow._  When Roman and Logan made a blanket fort, they did not fuck around.  The thing was the size of a large tent, encompassing the couch and TV, and had a functional doorway made of couch cushions that they only had to crouch down a bit to get through.  Virgil almost gasped at the sight of it, and Patton stopped and handed him the bowl of popcorn for some reason. Virgil gave him a confused look, and he laughed.

“I knew you’d be _bowled over_ by their fort-making skills!”

Virgil shook his head and gave him back the popcorn, but he was smiling.

They ducked into the blanket fort, and Virgil seated himself carefully next to the “door” with his back against the couch, a little worried about knocking the whole thing down by accident.  Inside, the floor was covered by a thick layer of what had to be almost every blanket in the house, some having obviously been used in construction and a few more set aside to actually be used as blankets.  There was a ring of pillows and cushions around the outside to lean back on.

Logan and Roman were bickering over movie choices, shooting down every suggestion each other made, but they both deferred to Patton as soon as he came in, asking him to pick something and save them from further argument.

“Hmm…”  He set the popcorn in the middle of the floor.  “I like all of ‘em. Virge, what do _you_ think we should watch?”

“What?”  He didn’t feel he had the right to make a decision- movie night was _their_ thing, he just happened to be here for it.  Also, they probably weren’t into the same kind of stuff as him, so if he chose he’d be the only one satisfied.  “Um… I dunno, whatever you guys pick is fine with me…”

Patton looked skeptical, but didn’t push it.  “Okay, well… let’s see…” His hand hovered in front of the shelf of movies under the TV.  “Is everybody okay with Aristocats?”

They were, of course, okay with _anything_ Patton wanted.  They all settled in to watch it.  Virgil hung back in his corner. He couldn’t reach the popcorn from there, but he didn’t care all _that_ much.  He didn’t want to intrude.  He was only in here to begin with because they’d feel guilty if they didn’t include him, after all.  So he was a couple feet away by the couch while they were in the middle of the blankets, Patton laying his head on Roman’s chest while Roman trapped Logan under his legs despite his protests.  Making quiet inside jokes he didn’t understand and felt out of line for even hearing. He tried to focus on the movie, but it didn’t work very well. Maybe he should just… go…

Patton caught him edging towards the door of the fort and stopped him with a concerned look.  “Virgil? Where are you going, is something wrong?”

“Nah, I was just…”  On his way to hide in the kitchen until the movie was over and let them have their family time without his presence making it weird.  “Getting up for some water.”

“Oh, well, you should’ve said something!  I’ll pause the movie until you get back.”

So much for hoping they’d get distracted and forget to wonder about his absence once he made his excuse and left.  He went and actually had a drink, because it would be suspicious if he didn’t, and gave himself a minute before going back.  He could ignore them for another hour or so, it was fine. Unless he ended up staring and they caught him and asked what he was doing and he accidentally spilled his feelings all over their nice, happy movie night.  Y’know, the ones about envying how close they all seemed to be and how unrealistically _nice_ everyone was all the time, and knowing he didn’t belong and was probably just bringing them down the entire time he was here and if they hadn’t realized that yet they would soon, and despite that, _really fuckin’ not wanting_ to go back home when Patton didn’t need him anymore, which would be in just a few days at the rate he was healing.  He couldn’t go back to a house where no one actually liked or trusted each other, and the best-case result of admitting he needed help was being ignored entirely rather than insulted for his weakness, and there was no Patton to give him the affection he didn’t even realize he needed or Logan to fix him when he went and broke himself or Roman to take a little weight off his shoulders with his protective attitude towards the others.  He couldn’t go home and be okay, not- ha- now that he knew what he was without.

“Virgil?”  Whoops, he’d been staring at an empty glass for much longer than he’d intended to let himself.  “Everything okay out there?”

He shook himself out of it.  “Yeah, coming back, just… got lost in some thoughts,” he said, which was broadly true.  He climbed back into the blanket fort, and settled in his corner as Patton resumed the movie.  Barely two minutes passed before he was getting that _look_ from him again.

“Psst, Virge- why are you all the way over there?”

“I, uh…”

“Let him sit there if he wants,” Logan chastised.  “Maybe he’s not comfortable with that much physical contact.”

“Oh.”  Patton didn’t seem convinced.  “But yesterday… Oh, no, is something making you uncomfortable about this?  We can change it if--!”

“No, no!  Nothing is… this is all great.  Little bit concerned about all of this collapsing on us, but it’s great.  It just, y’know… looks like you guys are having a family movie night thing, and I don’t wanna get in the way of that, so…”

_“Virgil!”_ Patton half-glared, half-pouted at him with a scolding tone.  “We’re not having a family movie night without _you!”_

Virgil’s brain bluescreened for a second or two, refusing to process what that statement seemed to imply.  Roman leaned over while he was blanking and tugged him closer to the cuddle pile, at which point Patton took over again and pulled him in.  He ended up somewhere in the middle when all the repositioning was done, with his head on Patton’s shoulder and his legs entangled between Roman and Logan.  It was simultaneously a somewhat awkward position and the most comfortable he’d ever been in his life. Who cared about the _movie,_ he was just gonna close his eyes and try to memorize this feeling as well as he possibly could.  It would be the perfect bit of warmth to call upon in a week or so when he was alone again.

* * *

 

Another day, a little bit closer to getting everything back to normal, and more stuff Virgil really wasn’t sure he was… well, for lack of a better word, truly _allowed_ to be included in.  Roman wanted to take them all on a picnic, saying the fresh air would be good for them.  All Virgil could think of while they prepared for it was the fact that if he’d actually discorporated, he would have been back about sometime today, so there went one of his excuses for staying.  At least going outside made it a little more plausible that he needed to be there for Patton, to make sure he was okay and didn’t somehow get hurt or anything, even if they were sticking fairly close to the house.

The spot they found to set up was pretty close to perfect.  Trees for shade, level ground and soft grass. They spread the blanket out, but the edges kept flipping up from the wind, so Virgil went off to look for some rocks or something to hold it down with.  Logan spent a minute fretting over whether he’d know the best _kind_ of rocks to get for the job, before giving in to himself and running off after him to make sure it was done right.  That left Patton and Roman sitting on the blanket, waiting a little impatiently for them to come back so they could actually unpack and have lunch.

“Isn’t it nice out?”  Patton sighed, falling back onto the blanket and looking up at the sky.  It was: warm and sunny, with hardly a cloud to be seen.

“It is indeed,” Roman agreed.  “I mean, I could certainly improve on it, but…”

“No working during the picnic,” Patton reminded him.  He stretched his arm out to the side, into the grass, and pinched off the base of a dandelion’s stem.  He reached up while Roman leaned over and allowed him to tuck the flower behind his ear. “Ooh, if I find more I can make you a crown…”  He looked around, but no more flowers were within reach.

Roman had a better vantage point, given that he was not flat on his back.  “Aha, there’s some just over there- would you like me to go get them for you?”

He could do it himself, of course, but he _was_ quite comfortable, even a bit sleepy thanks to the warm sun, and if Roman wanted to do it for him he wasn't going to stop him.  “Okay, if you don’t mind,” he said, putting an arm over his eyes to block the brightness as Roman left.

Patton’s state of bliss lasted maybe two minutes once he was alone, and then one of those rare clouds covered the sun, and suddenly the strong breeze was just chilly instead of refreshing.  He sat up and pulled Virgil’s jacket tighter around himself- yes, he was still wearing it, no, he did not plan to give it back any time soon even though he could definitely find one of his own somewhere- and felt a second chill at the realization that he couldn’t see any of his friends anymore.

No, no, it was okay, Roman wasn’t _that_ far away, he could still see _him._  There just had to be all these hills making things difficult.  But… would he hear if Patton shouted for him to come back? What if someone _else_ heard too, somehow, and Roman didn’t get there first?  No, he should just stay quiet and wait. He pulled his knees up to his chest and shivered.

He felt so exposed.  Being alone outside, this was how…  He’d been walking by himself in the morning after breakfast, and he hadn’t been at all suspicious of Logan suddenly deciding to join him, because why would he be?  Except then it wasn’t Logan and the next thing he knew he was waking up chained in the basement and it was dark and cold and his head hurt, and it only got worse from there.

He wrapped his arms around his legs and ducked his head.  Nothing would happen if he didn’t look. That was how it worked, right?  If he just kept his head down and didn’t move and didn’t make any noise everything would be okay.

Someone touched his shoulder, and he flinched hard, but he hadn’t looked up, hadn’t made a sound, so maybe he was still safe.  Maybe. He slowly became conscious of the fact that someone was in front of him, kneeling, talking to him quietly. The actual words entered his awareness a second later.

“...what’s going on in your head right now, but you’re completely safe, I promise.  I mean, as much as it’s actually ever possible to--”

“Not a good time.”

“Sorry.  You’re okay, Patton, you’re safe, you’re with your friends.  Can you look at me?”

That sounded like Virgil.  He raised his head a little- it was in fact him.  Patton reached for him slightly, and he hesitated.

“Is it okay if I touch you?”

He nodded, and Virgil took his hand, and he believed what he was saying a little better because at least he was sure he was real now.

“Okay, do you remember where we are?  That might sound like a stupid question, but I can’t read your mind.”

“...Yeah,” he half-whispered.  “Outside.”

“Yeah, outside and not far from your house.  Do you want to go back in?”

He nodded again quickly, and then remembered _why_ they were outside.  “But- Roman- I don’t wanna ruin the picnic…”

“You’re not ruining anything,” Roman assured him from his right side.  “We can have it inside. I wanted to do this to make _you_ happy, remember?  If you’re not happy out here, there’s no point.”

“...Okay.”

They went in and laid the picnic blanket on the floor by the open window, which was basically the same as being outside anyway, right?  If Patton was a little clingy, sticking close to Virgil and not letting go of his hand, no one pointed it out. He made as many dumb jokes as he could think of in an effort to deflect the worried looks he kept getting, and eventually everyone relaxed, falling back into the rhythm of hanging out together.  It was good, he was getting better, even if it didn’t necessarily always feel like it.

* * *

 

It was evening.  The coffee table was covered in papers, all four of them working together to sort out the backlog, even though Virgil kept telling them they didn’t have to give him all this input, he wasn’t even a main side, after all.  Either way, the task didn’t have his full attention. He felt vaguely uneasy and it was hard to concentrate. Still, Logan said they needed all the help they could get if they were going to work through all this, so he tried to contribute.  Mostly this just meant tapping a pencil increasingly hard against the table and doing his best not to snap at Roman.

He looked around, frustrated by his own lack of focus.  The window shade was still up; maybe that was the thing bothering him.  He didn’t like when _he_ couldn’t see out into the dark and yet anyone out there could see in.  He went and pulled it down, but didn’t feel much better. He was about to sit back on the couch when there was a knock at the door.

Well, okay, less of a knock and more of a pounding.  He snapped into crisis mode, pulling Patton to his feet and placing himself between him and the door, almost vibrating with adrenaline as he tried to nudge Patton towards the stairs.  He didn’t go, he was frozen in place, too deep in his own panic response to understand that he even _could_ run.  Roman jumped up, sword at the ready, and Logan just stood halfway between them and prepared to act in whatever way the situation turned out to require.

“Open the door or I’ll do it for you!”  Fuck, _fuck,_ Virgil had been right, that was Mal’s voice.  Patton had his hands balled up in Virgil’s shirt, now, and his face shoved into his shoulder, trying to hide.

“He’s serious,” Virgil managed, backing up a step and forcing Patton to move as well or be pushed over.  “He’ll break the door down.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll handle this,” Roman said darkly.  He opened the door halfway, stopping it with his foot so it couldn’t open fully and brandishing his sword at the man outside.  “Leave right now, and don’t ever come here again,” he growled.

Malice wasn’t particularly intimidated.  “What, you think I _want_ to be here?  Let’s make this quick, you have something of ours and I lost the coin-flip to come take it back.”

Roman bristled.  “He’s not yours, he’s _ours,_ and you’re not going anywhere _near_ him!”

“Oh, for- I’m not talking about _Morality,_ you idiot, I’m aware _that_ plan failed.”

He stood firm.  “Neither am I.”

Malice actually looked surprised for a second.  Then he glanced past Roman and smirked. “Fine, I won’t get any closer than I already am.”

Virgil saw the blur of movement and reacted just as fast, shoving Patton down behind the couch, and then something hit him like a solid punch to the chest and he stumbled back.  He looked down- yup, he’d been stabbed, great. Cool and fun. …That thought was probably the shock talking. Also it really, really hurt, now that he thought about it.

“Fuckin’ figures,” he muttered, his face pale and breathing labored.  He started to fall forward and Roman caught him, lowering them both to their knees.  Roman’s hand hovered near the knife- as if he actually thought pulling it out would do any good- and finally settled on Virgil’s chest.  He tried to reach up and pull the hand away, but his fingers weren’t responding super well and his arm fell back down after a second anyway.  “Don’t… bother,” he forced out, trying not to cough up blood on Roman’s nice white shirt. That would probably be horrible etiquette. “His aim’s good… it’ll just… hurt more.”

_“Virgil,”_ Roman whispered desperately, “I- I’m so sorry, I should have expected- this is my fault, I-”

“Shut up.”  Virgil leaned his head on Roman’s shoulder.  “I’m gonna come back, don’t…” He finally gave in to a coughing fit, the movement probably fucking his insides up even worse.  “Sorry. Don’t be so dramatic.”

Roman couldn’t hold back a sob, too upset to respond to the friendly jab.  All his eloquent words had deserted him, which was bullshit, because this would be the _perfect_ time for some sort of deeply emotional speech, the kind Virgil _deserved,_ but no, all he could do was _feel_ the stupid emotions with no way to properly articulate them.

Virgil’s eyes started to close, but shot back open.  “Patton- Patton can’t see… this, right?”

Roman looked up.  Patton was with Logan on the other side of the room now, facing away from them.  He was crying hard, but Logan had an arm around his shoulders, consoling him with the fact that none of them could actually die and trying to lead him upstairs, not letting him turn around to look.  “No, he can’t.”

“Good.”  The mask Virgil had somehow been keeping up this entire time fell away and his pain showed clearly on his face, tears slipping from his eyes.  “Thanks for having me,” he joked. “Don’t know when I’ll… get away from them again… but… it’s been nice.” His casual words were belied by how choked his voice was, even scared.  Killing him would only be the start of Mal’s retribution, once he reformed back home in his room. Hell, it might be preferable to just stay dead.

Roman’s eyes widened.  “No, no- Virgil, don’t go, stay with me,” he pleaded, as if Virgil had any choice in the matter.

Virgil huffed, almost a laugh.  “You know I can’t stay long,” he muttered into Roman’s shoulder.  A few seconds more and he was limp in his arms, no longer breathing.  Logan and Patton were upstairs in one of their rooms by now, so Roman felt free to let go, sobbing and clinging to Virgil as if it would do anything to stop his body fading away.  Within minutes he was left holding nothing but a blood-coated knife. He stood shakily and threw the damned thing as hard as he could out the closed window with a shout, conjuring a new pane of glass and waving away the remains of the one he’d broken.  Then he fell to his knees again, half-wishing he’d left a few shards of glass scattered around for dramatic effect, and cried some more.

* * *

 

Patton was inconsolable for the rest of the day, and finally locked himself in his room so Logan would stop trying.  He was a great friend and they were all lucky to have him, but sometimes he just didn’t understand that not all emotional distress could be reasoned away.  He knew Virgil would reform. That didn’t make any of this any less unbearable. He didn’t even have the energy to try and comfort Roman- even though he _should,_ even though Roman surely needed it more, having been the one to- to- the one who was _there._  He didn’t have the energy or even the desire to do anything but ball Virgil’s hoodie up so he could hug it and cry himself to sleep.

The next morning- well, day, he woke up at noon- was… _marginally_ easier.  He could look his friends in the eye again, like he hadn’t been able to last night.  He felt sort of responsible, and he knew it didn’t make any sense but he still _did._  If Virgil hadn’t pushed _him_ out of the way, if he hadn’t been so _darn protective-_ if Patton had actually gotten it through his head that he needed to move, and they’d both made it upstairs to safety, then maybe… but there was no point in thinking that now.  He didn’t bother getting dressed, since he’d never taken his clothes off to sleep in the first place, just put the hoodie back on and went downstairs to see about breakfast. He didn’t have much of an appetite, but Logan would be upset if he didn’t come down.  And he didn’t know how much longer he could be in his room before his grief stopped numbing his fear of being alone.

Logan was making breakfast… brunch?... rather stiffly, his eyes distant.  He hadn’t combed his hair, which was very unusual. Patton came up behind him and rested his chin on his shoulder, apologizing quietly for snapping at him last night, and Logan apologized, too, for not recognizing what he really needed.  They didn’t say anything else until Roman came down.

Roman… he didn’t look good.  Like Patton, he hadn’t changed clothes, but unlike Patton, he really should have, because there was still blood on his shirt.  His hair was a _disaster,_ as if he’d been pulling at it all night, which was entirely plausible, because he didn’t appear to have slept.  He fell into a chair and nearly slumped onto the kitchen table before catching himself and merely hunching in his seat.  Jeez, his posture was worse than… never mind.

“Ro?” Patton asked as gently as he could.  “Is there… anything I can do for you?”

Roman laughed harshly, staring at his hands on the table.  “I don’t know, can you bring him back?”

Patton dropped his gaze and wrapped his arms around himself, tears spilling over for about the fifth time so far that day.  He was getting sick of crying. It wasn’t even a helpful release of emotion anymore, just… tiring. “No,” he whispered. “I- I’m sorry.”

“Then there’s nothing you can do for me.  I’m going to keep brainstorming. There has to be a way…”

Logan turned around and looked at him.  “I can tell you right now there is no way to bring someone back before they’ve naturally reformed, and you shouldn’t try.  A person’s sense of self and all their memories are not something you should mess with.”

Roman’s voice tightened even more.  “Then- then _something,_ I don’t know, at least- some way to keep him from going back to _them,_ he can’t just _take_ him from us like that!”  He stopped there, feeling his voice about to break if he said another word.

Patton looked up, in the middle of scrubbing at his tears with a sweater-paw.  There was a strange light in his eyes. “...I think I can do something about that.”

Roman stared.  “Wait, you- you _can?”_

“I _think,”_ he repeated.  “It’s… been a while, but…”  He pushed himself away from the counter he was leaning on and pushed his sleeves up.  “Logan? Catch me if I faint.”

Logan turned the stove off for safety and shared a startled look with Roman, not entirely sure what was going on.  Patton closed his eyes and held both hands out in front of him, palms down. He frowned a little in concentration and made them into fists.  Then there was a shift in air pressure as he turned his hands over, face contorted with effort, and _pulled._  The whole house shook.  Patton opened his eyes, smiled weakly at nothing in particular and passed out.

Logan caught him, as requested, and lowered him to the floor.  Roman pushed himself up from the table. “What did he _do?!”_

Logan wasn’t certain, but he… had an idea.  A hope. “Go look upstairs,” he said, “and tell me if anything is different.”

Roman ran up to the hallway where all three of their rooms were located and laughed in disbelief.  There was a new door, next to Logan’s room and across from his own. He hesitated only a second before pushing the door open- listen, he was _dead,_ he wouldn’t know, and Roman had to make sure.  And he was nosy.

Virgil’s room- that had to be what this was- was… pretty dark and spooky, for sure.  Weird lighting, giant spiderwebs everywhere, clock running way too fast on the wall. But then he looked closer and saw the little pillow with a cat face, the almost-cute cartoon spiders on the curtains, the Nightmare Before Christmas posters he was maybe a little bit jealous of even though he had loads of posters in his own room already.  Yeah, that seemed about right. He backed out of the room and shut the door, tearing up a little with a fond smile, and went to tell Logan he was right.

* * *

 

Virgil faded back into existence in his own bed.  Only a distant soreness was left of the wound that had killed him, but he knew if he pulled his shirt up there would be a faint scar.  Dying tended to leave its mark on a person.

It seemed to be nighttime.  He turned and buried his face in his pillow and pulled the blankets over his head, wondering how long he had until Mal realized he existed again and came in to make him regret that fact.  At least Patton was still safe. Virgil had protected him, he’d done his job. He had that to hold on to. He was going to need it.

He might have fallen asleep for a while, tired out from the whole… death thing.  Next thing he knew, his bedroom door was opening with a creak. (He’d made it that way on purpose, so he’d always know if someone was coming in.)  He stayed still under the covers to see if whoever was there would assume he wasn’t all the way back yet and leave again. Someone came up to the side of the bed and touched his shoulder, and he reacted instinctively, throwing the hand off and bolting upright with his back to the wall, an arm up in front of his face and his mouth twisted into a snarl.  Then he actually stopped to realize who he was looking at and froze, confused.

“Welcome back, kiddo,” Patton said with a smile, holding his hands close to his chest to show he wasn’t going to try and touch him again.  “Sorry to scare you.” But… how could he be here? He _couldn’t,_ could he?

He scowled.  “…Dee? That’s not funny and I’m not in the mood.  Change back.”

Patton’s hands dropped along with his expression.  “No- oh, I can’t believe we didn’t think- it’s really me, Virge, I swear…”

Deceit didn’t know his name.  Virgil lowered his own hands from their defensive stance.  “What… what are you doing here?” He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the wave of dizziness it brought, and checked him over a bit frantically.  He… didn’t seem any _more_ hurt than before.  Less, actually, given that he’d had a few more days to heal.  “You- you can’t be here, it’s not safe, you- what the _fuck,_ Patton- I--”

Patton caught his hands to still them.  “No, shh, it’s okay, we’re not… look, come out here with me.”  He pulled him into the hall, and all Virgil could do was make a confused noise in his throat.  This wasn’t his house.

“Yes, it _is,”_ Patton said softly, and he realized he’d spoken aloud.  “It is now, and it should have been much sooner.”

“I… you…?”  Virgil shook himself out of a stunned silence.  “You- you didn’t have to do this…”

Patton put his hands on his shoulders, and Virgil found himself leaning into the touch until they were hugging in the middle of the hallway.  “Honestly, Virgil,” he said lightly, “I’m _very_ insulted that you seem to think I didn’t _want_ to.”

Never in his life had he so completely had no idea what to say.  It was one thing to keep _telling_ him he was wanted and liked, and another entirely to _drag his entire room over from the other house._  He ducked his face into Patton’s shoulder to hide the fact that he might start crying.  It was a lot to process right after coming back from discorporation, okay? Patton seemed to understand even though he couldn’t bring himself to speak, and waited patiently while he pulled himself together.

Virgil stepped back eventually, mostly composed, and Patton took his hand and led him down the stairs.  He’d barely reached the bottom when Roman came out of nowhere and tackled him with an overjoyed shout, almost knocking him into the banister.  He ended up flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, with Roman wrapped around him tightly.

“What _is_ it with you people?” he complained, although it didn’t work so well when he was laughing.  He switched their positions with one quick movement and lay on top of Roman for a few seconds in retaliation while he made indignant noises at him before getting up.  He couldn’t stop smiling.

Logan caught his eye and beckoned him over to the couch.  “Sit here and close your eyes,” he instructed. “Roman has a surprise for you.”

He complied, raising an eyebrow.  “What, because I’m not surprised enough _already?”_

Patton sat next to him- he knew it was him without looking, because he couldn’t seem to stop bouncing excitedly in place- while Roman ran upstairs to get whatever it was he wanted to show him.  He came back down a few seconds later, and at the sound of how fast he was taking the stairs Virgil couldn’t quite stop himself from telling him he was gonna fall if he kept doing that.

“Oh, whatever,” he whined.  “Open your eyes!”

Roman was holding a new hoodie- wait, no, not new, it was the black one he’d torn up fighting Malice, only he’d fixed it and… and _improved_ it.  Rather than just patching the holes up with matching thread, he’d patched them with… well… patches, outlining the purple fabric in white thread that somehow didn’t look out of place.  There was also a new lining inside the hood, and a different drawstring, and… he squinted at the little emblem on the left side. Yeah, that was it- he recognized the design as one of the things he’d shown Patton from his sketchbook.  It was just a stupid doodle, but he felt like it represented him, and Patton had _remembered._

Roman was watching him a bit nervously, waiting for a reaction.  “I figured since you don’t appear to be getting the old one back from Patton…”  Virgil just kept staring, and he fidgeted. “Do you like it?”

“I… yeah,” Virgil breathed.  “You could say that.” It was _perfect._

“I… sort of looked in your room to get an idea of your style,” he admitted.  “I didn’t go through any of your stuff, though, I swear!”

“You _better_ not have.”  There was no real bite to the words.  He caught the jacket as Roman tossed it to him and put it on.  Patton squealed.

“It looks so _good_ on you, oh my gosh!  Me and Logan helped too, you know, he did the pattern stuff, and the cloud was my idea.”

Virgil couldn’t see himself, but he definitely _felt_ good in it.  He leaned back into the cushions and pulled the hood down over his eyes for a few seconds with a grin, aware he was blushing.  “It’s great. Thanks, guys.”

“Think of it as a housewarming present,” Patton suggested.  “Y’know, ‘cause you moved houses, and also it’ll keep you warm.”

“That’s… not what a housewarming present is,” said Logan.  Patton just shrugged. He shook his head. “In any case, he is _somewhat_ right.  We wanted to make you feel at home here, because this _is_ your home now.”

Virgil blinked a few times, and then Patton was hugging him.  “Exactly! I keep trying to tell you, we’re _all_ a family- that includes you.”

Roman was last, and the one to break him.  He knelt in front of the couch and tipped Virgil’s hood back, mouth quirking into a smile, his voice soft and earnest.  “Welcome home, Virge. I don’t know what we’ve been doing all this time without you.”

Virgil stared at him for a second, and then attempted to hide his face with a sleeve-covered hand as he helplessly started laughing and crying at the same time.  Logan was a little concerned, but Patton assured him it was fine, he was fine, and Virgil nodded in agreement. He was _way_ more than fine.  He was _home._

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to dani for convincing me to post this <3
> 
> im on tumblr @do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Glimpse Of Healing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632044) by [SJChronicle (ShadowsofaChronicle)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsofaChronicle/pseuds/SJChronicle)




End file.
